I have a small pile of them here, but none of them look right.
Is a whole bunch of nooses: “overkill”?
I keep meaning to make a sad dark fat bird to stick in there too, but I’d like to bake the clay for that while toasting something for dinner in the oven. It’d be a shame to put the oven on twice,
and the toaster isn’t cooperating.
Perhaps your next book could be about a toaster that was just a little bitch.
Which book of yours does that company want to buy? Is it the lighthouse one? I never actually read it, but I gave it a “glowing” review:
“The best lighthouse centric children’s book that I’ve read all this week” … something to that effect.
I am a sellout but I suppose, at the very least, I’m a decent friend. That’s really great though! Congratulations!
I can do the week after Thanksgiving, anyway, probably any of them coming up. My cousin’ll be here from Colorado with his wife and 2 kids until Black Friday, after that.
They’re cute, his kids. I was throwing them both in a massive leaf pile one day, repeatedly. Kids don’t get tired of that. (The raking got waylaid as a result.)
At least 5 year olds don’t weigh much and you can keep doing it.
All of those leaves are still in a slightly smooshed down heap in the front of the house now though. I might just toss a tangle of Christmas lights on top of it when Thanksgiving ends – to be “festive”.
My joke for Thanksgiving is that: “I’m thankful alcohol still works”.
—–
Seriously though, they give us things of hand sanitizer to use where I work, because kids are gross and they all have germs. I haven’t used any of it on my own hands, but sometimes, those rare times when we actually get a lunch break, I think about drinking it. The alcohol content has to be pretty high in that stuff, right?
I got through Halloween anyway. Nobody knocked on my door, I’m glad.
I like it, I used to like it a lot, but I can’t handle living people in costumes that have all that red shit on them anymore. I usually I don’t go out on Halloween at all anymore, but I did this year, only to go hiking in the middle of the woods, and to come back home before the schools let out. A nice woman who had less hair than I do went with me. I baked a few extra cookies to give her. I guess she didn’t like them.
I had a date with a woman this past Friday night too, who I suspected would be on the larger side. That isn’t the “big” deal it’s made out to be, I don’t think, not for me anyway. Just have a visible chin and don’t try to murder me …please.
This one only had photos of her head. She was, clearly, way younger in some of them, but she had a chin and a head of hair in all of them, so it couldn’t be that bad.
It was pretty bad though, and I’m not just concentrating on the fact that there wasn’t a chin, again.
She was loud, and round, not quite as hairy as I am, and she kept saying: “Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt.”
Like, WTF would she be doing with all those T-shirts?
She also told me that she was a ‘vegetarian’ before I agreed to this, except when I got there she said that she’s having Lobster and Fillet Mignon for Thanksgiving this year.
For one thing:
The complete disregard for typical Thanksgiving mores!
– You’re supposed to eat textured plant protein that is vaguely beige colored.
– Some assholes will kill a real bird, sure (excuse me), but a cow and a crustacean?
And:
– What does “vegetarian” actually mean now?!!
She set out interviewing me with such gems as: “What kind of car do you drive?” , “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?”…
Which is a struggle for me to not say: “Well, I’ll probably be dead in a ditch somewhere.” or “I have a chin!!”
There was one 3 weeks ago who offered to drive me home. She was really embarrassed when I got in and she had to do one of those breathalizer tests in order to get her car to start.
She looked really out of breath from doing that too. I was about to offer to “blow on her hose'” for her (not actually a euphemism). Still, I’m guessing there were situations where she’s been subjected to this before. This woman must know how to do this if it’s gotten to the stage where that’s what it takes to get the ignition going.
She didn’t have a chin either. The bones there just seemed to be missing. Am I too picky with those 2 criteria:
– Have a chin
– Try not to murder me
I probably should have called her back though. It’s not like I have anything better to do on Friday nights, except I suppose I could sit around and tie some more miniature nooses.
I had this idea while sitting around alone with my cat, largely because my cat is indifferent to any commentary I make.
And because I haven’t spoken to another human being since Tuesday.
This is some stuff that was playing on the computer while I tried to wrestle the cat away from reheated Indian food.
Penny Dreadful –
Frankenstein made his monster all “emo”. I would have abandoned it too.
When the monster resurfaced and demanded that Dr. Frankenstein make it a companion, it didn’t specify any sort of demands: “no Yankees fans, no bathroom selfies, must love dogs…” – They always make demands.
I can suspend my disbelief over reanimation, but the monster’s complacency here undermines everything I’ve learned about dating.
…and this show is boring.
The Messengers –
Some bullshit happened. It looked like a lot more bullshit was going to happen, but there’s only so much thinly veiled bible-ly bullshit that I can stand.
A show about bicycle messengers would have been a lot better:
“Here’s your package Mr. Jones.”
“Thanks!”
The end. – That’s so much better! Is anybody working on a show like that? They should be.
I know “a guy” who would be willing to play a role in a show like that, if they fed him Indian food, and gave him a cool bike to ride – hopefully a pink one, with disc brakes!
The Returned –
Do you remember that show: “Lost”, with the polar bears? This was like that, with different actors and no polar bears. I’m going to check now to see if I haven’t copied the actual description of the show verbatim.
No. We’re good.
This show probably isn’t though, isn’t good. I mean, I didn’t see any polar bears in either of the first two episodes, and the mysterious atmosphere that they were trying to cultivate was cloying and heavy-handed.
There was none of that religious nonsense, or bad werewolf make up at least. Some polar bears would have been nice though
Turn –
This is the best television show about a cabbage farmer that I’ve ever seen. I’m rooting for the British to win the war though. Their uniforms are better, and I’d like some of that free health care.
Marco Polo –
His kung-fu instructor is blind, but that seems to be as far as they take it. Are they all going to be sitting around a swimming pool at some point, so that it makes sense to me? This seems like a wasted opportunity.
The Khan, one of the major characters, is a huge jerk …but in a different way from “Khan” in Star Trek 2.
Daredevil –
I’ve always felt it brilliant that they made a blind guy into a superhero. It always seemed an awful shame that blind people weren’t able to read the comic books though. They needed a radio drama, or …this?
The blind guy in this could stand to look much blinder though. I don’t mean Stevie Wonder blind, but he’s looking everyone directly in the eyes pretty much all the time. He could stand to do a few Dick Van Dyke trips over an ottoman at least.
– There is a ton of blood! I suppose it’s important to the mood and the plot, I just have a thing about that much of it splattered around like the shittiest parts of my real life.
Jessica Jones –
I like this woman. She has a “good personality”. I think when the glass is always half full, you probably haven’t been drinking properly. She has nice hair too. I have a thing for dark dark hair which, frankly, I don’t understand at all.
The dialogue is complete garbage: “I’ll kill you if you die in my car”?!
Hopefully they’ll have her fighting toothy monsters in future seasons. I’m pretty sure that anyone can beat up sickly British men – even revolution era cabbage farmers, apparently.
Bob Ross (Beauty is Everywhere)-
This dude has some Ballin’ hair! I couldn’t tolerate watching him paint that beach scene in the first episode though. He did it all “wrong”.
I keep telling people that I’m going to grow my hair out like Bob Ross, but I don’t have the patience to do that.
I also take issue with the subtitle: “Beauty is Everywhere”. Have the producers never been to Hoboken? No. Beauty isn’t everywhere.
They should make a show with a person as bald as I am called: “The World is Full of Horrors”. I would watch that one through to the end.
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend –
This was almost 10 minutes of trying way too hard. The show went on, but I gave up.
…so it was better than a lot of the dates I’ve been on, in that I was able to walk away without waiting for someone else to get bored (for a change).
She didn’t seem nearly as crazy as some of the people that are really out there in the Horrible Real World.
…I wonder how she feels about: Indian food, cats, and bicycles.
Black Mirror –
In this one you get to watch a guy fuck a pig
The first few minutes and the last few minutes tend to be quite interesting. The rest of it is slowly paced plot development and: “Damn-it Kenny, I already fed you, quit licking my plate!”
This cat is a jerk. He sleeps too much and his hair gets on everything.
I got one of the prettiest bikes off of E-bay. It was red and white and blue. I thought the people in Japan might quit asking where I was from if they saw those colors blur by.
They would think I was English, or French, …or any of the other possibilities.
And I got it all dressed up recently. I did the handlebar tape over in red and white stripes, the grey cable housings changed to red and blue. It was a lot flashier that way. I would be hard to miss. Everyone in traffic would see me.
The problem in Japan was that everyone would see you, and they would stare at you. They would forget that they were driving cars straight into you. That part is painful. So I got this set of – supposedly bombproof Italian wheels. I heard about people having head on collisions with cars, their bikes and their bodies shattered, but these wheels stay perfectly true. I don’t intend to test that out, but you never know. My bike was suddenly more somber then though. Those wheels are dark in hue.
It’s okay. I wear tight clothes. People were probably going to be looking at my poor ass in spandex, more than anything at pavement level. The wheels feel fabulous too. It doesn’t matter if they aren’t as bright and shiny as everything else was.
Then I was getting ready to go, and the bags wouldn’t fit on it. That was a real problem.
If I made it to the desert, I’d need a way to carry water. If I made it to those seriously big mountains, the ones where there is snow, even in summer, if I made it there I’d need to have a jacket. Maybe I can even make it to those places:
if the cars don’t hit me,
if the scorpions don’t sting me numb while coyotes circle in,
if gangs of the other kinds of bikers don’t beat my poor spandex clad ass,
etcetera.
But it isn’t what I try to sell it as. It probably never was. It isn’t a fun summer trip. The ways that I might die, written there as they are, they aren’t even jokes. I’m only going out to see a little more of the world, to say goodbye to places I have never been to, to do …something …just to do something. I am running riding far away from things that aren’t here anymore. She was standing in puddles of blood, just before she disappeared, same as if he had killed her for real. .
I bought another bike to take back to Japan, when I gave up on being here again. It isn’t nearly as pretty as the other one. No one would know a thing about the person on it, if they even saw me. People will just think that I am a dark blur, the shadow of a fast passing cloud. It is a racing bike. Nearly every part of it is a dull dead black, but it will hold the bags. I can carry more water in the desert. I can take a jacket to climb the larger mountain passes, where there is snow, even in summer. There are bits of chrome on it that storms and all of my sweat will corrode, probably before the next car even has a chance to hit me. It’s a good bike, a better bike. I did to it what you shouldn’t do. I painted those exposed metal pieces red and blue – to keep them from seizing up with rust. I even got a helmet that matches. It’s the colors of my country, the colors that really come to mind, to mine. It is: dark, dark, dark.
It is: red, black and blue, like a lot of other things are.
I thought I was going to get stuck attending the library’s “Lap Time Story Hour for Toddlers”.
I don’t have a toddler.
A week and a half after I gave up searching for other options, I remembered that there was a very small bookstore in my very small town. I was proud of myself for realizing this even if I was, then, an extra 10 miles in the opposite direction. At mile 13, I decided I should go back and ask right away, so I reversed course and pedaled at a fair pace, hoping they wouldn’t have closed for the evening.
I thought I had made good time really, but they were closed. The place had actually gone out of business a long time ago.. Perhaps that’s why our ” esteemed & venerable professor/ Allison” (She’s so talented!) (I did get an A in this class by the way.) perhaps that’s why she said to “call your closest bookstore and library, and see if they have any reading events coming up”. It also occurred to me to feel guilty, later, for never visiting before
Luckily (?) when I went to the library to knit with a bunch of old ladies (in my best bicycling spandex), I thought to ask the people at the desk if they knew of any literary readings. They didn’t. Who the hell would? But they’re professionals. They’ve probably heard stranger requests; let’s not get into that. The guy behind the counter did a systematic search of prep-schools, community colleges, and museums to find a poetry thing in central New Jersey. Joy of joys!
There were 10 people there -at that thing, 9 if you don’t count me, 6 if you don’t count the “professional poets” who were asked to read. If we also exclude the woman that runs the place, and the publisher/ editor who drove one of the poets (who didn’t have a car): 4 people came. 2 of them read poems of their own, dreadful poems. I was surprised that I wasn’t sufficiently late to have missed that bit. No, dismayed is the word. But I was surprised that a man in a sport coat chose the term “frowny face” to complete a rhyme …one of his “sick mad rhymes”. I’m kidding. It wasn’t anything like that. He did have a nice sport coat though. The other 2 people, it turns out, were coerced into going by professors from other institutions.
The rule where you don’t explain your intentions/ explain what a poem means was done away with. The work did not speak for itself. If it did, we would have been better able to shut it up. The explanations were, at times, far longer than the poems themselves.
I would have liked some respite, more than two seconds of silence between each piece, and an overall silence from the guy seated behind me. He wasn’t as loud as people in Pentocostal churches are, but there was only one of him.
None of the poems were about breasts exactly, but it was a definite recurring theme. I’m not complaining, I just don’t get how they can be “angular”.
One of the professional poets was from Mexico. He sounded great whenever he slipped Spanish lines in. In an entirely English poem of his he recited something along the lines of: “I am lost, in complete darkness, there is nothing to see, and I am blind, without a map”.
I made a pretty special face at that and hoped he wouldn’t see my reaction. I also wondered how you would say “beat a dead horse” in Spanish. He seemed like a very decent human being though, and very happy for a poet, which was only partly suspicious.
The “her angular breasts” guy wasn’t bad, despite repeating that curious phrase several times. A lot of his poems were about women who didn’t like him which, again, I don’t have a problem with. He played old jazz music to accompany 2 of the poems he read. One of them didn’t match the rhythm well, but he didn’t seem to mind. I tried my best not to gaze, longingly, out the window. The people out there looked happy walking along the river in that warm spring sunshine. I thought I saw some ducks too. The old man’s odd shuffling dance in the thinly carpeted hall could meanwhile have done with some more flair. The guy sitting behind me provided it: “Oh! Yeah!!” , “That’s good!” he shouted. The other students there made “frowny faces” so I’m going to trust the consensus.
Somewhere in all of that, the ducks disappeared. Where do ducks go? Are there poems about that? I hope not!!
The last woman/ the only woman/ the last person to read was really really good. It wasn’t worth the 50 minute drive to hear her read 5 or 6 poems in a dim room too full of empty folding chairs, on an otherwise lovely sunny spring day, but it could have been, and it almost was. My favorite one of hers/ my favorite one of all was about a woman at a wedding getting it on with an Elvis impersonator in the parking lot. This is an outstanding idea that more people should explore. It could replace Westerns, and superhero films. I hope it’s an emerging genre.
She entitled it: “Faux King in the Parking Lot” which, if you say it out loud, is just about the cleverest thing I ever heard. She was really funny, both in speaking and in verse, and her part was finished far quicker than the other two. (I tried to clap a little extra to acknowledge that.)
Then the woman in charge thanked us all for coming and declared that each of the reader’s poetry collections would be available for sale by the exit door.
The other students and I got these looks of terror on our faces. Those poets looked like they wanted conversation. They wanted confirmation of their word-ly skill. They wanted to lean across that narrow doorframe and discuss nuances and rhythm. They almost outnumbered us!
I don’t know what school the other 2 students went to, I just know that they made it out the door before I could!
A boy at one of the elementary schools liked my pen. He asked if he could have it.
“But what would I write with?”
“I’ll give you my pen.”
“…Why don’t we just keep the pens we already have – save ourselves the trouble?”
“Please!”
“Why?”
“Please!!”
“That doesn’t answer the question!”
There was some stammering (not mine): “I’ll give you a hun, two, ffff…” It was kind of a lot of stammering, but eventually:
A boy at one of the elementary schools offered me $4,000 and a Play Station Portable for my pen, a pen that I found on the ground over the summer.
“Why?! …And why $4,000?!”
“Come on! Please please!”
“You still aren’t answering the question.”
“$4,000 and a Play Station Portable” he repeated, eyebrows raised in an attempt to entice me.
Because I am a shrewd negotiator, I asked him if the PlayStation Portable came with any games.
He said “No”.
The face I made said: “Why are you wasting my time?” But, to be fair: half of the ink was already used from the pen, and it was just a pen, just a pen that I found and used rarely. The black didn’t write at all. It was the weird colors: pink, purple, light blue, orange, and a yellow-green that did work. That’s a lot of colors still, maybe not $4,000 and a PlayStation Portable with no games worth of colors, but it’s more than most pens have. It’s worth something, let’s say. Whoever dropped that pen would probably be at least a little upset at losing it, and probably very upset about missing out on this $4,000 deal (minus the cost of a game and some batteries). If I ever met this person, whoever they were, if this deal went through, I’d have to cut them in for some of the profits. It’s only fair.
But instead of doing that, instead of writing up a bill of sale, writing it with that same pen in contention, in orange or …purple ink, I counter-offered:
“$4,021 dollars. …or $4,000 and a copy of Monster Hunter for the PSP, …because I’d like to see some monsters”.
He thought about it. He thought a lot, and seriously. It gave my mind the time to wander:
…Not real world monsters. Not the ones with human faces, the ones that kill what you love devoutly/ not that asshole who hurt and tried to murder “Roberta”. …I’d like to see imaginary monsters – colorful fantastic beasts: scaley, winged, blue and green things, with tentacles and tongues as long as their bodies. Spike tailed, slippery devils that don’t spill and splatter real people’s blood on the floors, up the walls, and all over the pavement outside where any passersby will see. “Fun monsters”, safely contained in small portable screens.
It made me the slightest bit uneasy, the waiting, for both reasons.
I was glad I didn’t push for $4,050. That, clearly, would have been too much to ask for a lost and partially broken pen.
I also wasn’t sure if he was aware that he could have bought “several” newer pens with $4,021, …probably more than 4,000 new pens. I told him this, in good faith: “Have your mom take you to the pen store man. They’ve got lot’s of pens, newer ones that aren’t messed up like mine is.”
I’m not sure the boy was listening though. He was somewhere else.
——–
“If you leave me I’ll understand. If this, this (gestures at the blood on the walls) is too crazy for you, I’ll understand. I’m so messed up. …You should go, get away from your trashy Kentucky girlfriend. You have every right to be ashamed of me.”
“No, no, no, no, no Roberta! I’m not leaving you, I’m not! And it isn’t like that!” I lifted her chin up. “Come on now. You’re from Massachusetts!”
There was the slightest trace of a smile then. I held her head in both hands and kissed the indentations at each corner of her mouth – the way I always did, and on both of her cheeks where it was red and hot and surprisingly free of tears. The smile disappeared.
There were sounds like sobs, unusual, involuntary noises you’d associate with shock and with grief, but there were no tears. This was a road she had gone down too many times. It was familiar territory for her. It wasn’t for me. I kissed the temples, between her eyes, on her lips, everywhere that might reassure her… “Really though! it isn’t your fault that this (gestures at the blood) happened. And -”
“No! No! I’m ruined. I’m ruined! …It’s always going to be this way!”
She really wasn’t ruined though. She wasn’t ruined any more than a pen I found in the grass on an ordinary summer morning could be worth $4,050.
———
That kid wasn’t listening though. He’d be better off with any other pen, but he was so intently focused on mine: “What about: $5,000 and a Nintendo 3Ds?” – he said.
“I’m confused again.” (And I was.) “How did the price jump up that much? (You don’t seem very good at this. ) …Does the 3Ds have any games?”
“No.”
“Not even ‘Monster Hunter’? Do they even make that for the DS?”
“No.”
“…I’ll stick with the pen for now. Can I see the money though? I’d like to see that much money someday.” (I’m not making it here.)
“Well I don’t have it now.”
“Alright, well, when you have it sometime, show me. Oh …and you’re supposed to be writing something …not practicing bad business deals.”
He sat down and started the assignment that the other children were already working on: writing about troubles that they’ve overcome.
Not everything is easily overcome, but the troubles in their essays seemed simple enough. I hope most children can have a childhood like that – cliched and innocent, without all the blood on the walls and the floors, on the steps, and street outside. I hope they don’t have to see anyone trying to murder their mothers. I hope it’s different kinds of things that ruin their birthday parties.
–
Her son didn’t eat a lot of sweets. She wouldn’t let him. “Too many kids these days get diabetes.”, she explained. But that week there was a different cake every night. There was a blue cake, and a yellow cake, a white cake with brown swirls, more cakes than he had likely seen in years. It was a simple distraction for the pair of them.
She put candles on the first cake for him and we both sang. I took photos, to document the “happy” occasion. Those photos show a boy, newly twelve, leaning back away from a white frosted cake, as though the fire was going to take him. As though, through this, we had put him in harm’s way.
I liked that boy. We were friends. He was safe then, then. I don’t know anything anymore.
—–
Some other teacher at the school told me to make sure that they each got a permission slip. I passed them out as the kids were writing. Another boy asked what they were for/ where they were going. I looked at it and told him: “the garbage dump”
“What?”
“It says ‘Sanitation and Waste Reclamation Facility’ so …I think you’re going to the garbage dump.”
“When?”
“October 27th”
“No! That’s my birthday!”
(Laughing) “Seriously! Oh! That’s grand! That’ll make a great story!”
“I don’t want to go to a dump on my birthday!”
“You mean the ‘Sanitation and Waste Reclamation Facility'” I said as I passed him the paper. “…maybe you’ll find some nice bottle caps. Worse things happen on people’s birthdays anyway.”
———–
But it was two days before. The thing that tried to kill them nearly died himself. Her son didn’t want to visit him in the hospital. Why the fuck would he? She decided the boy was afraid of: hospitals. She cried because he wouldn’t visit his father there, 2 days after the “man” would have killed them both.
I never even got to say goodbye to him, to her son. He liked me. He wasn’t afraid of me. And that’s what it really was. He wasn’t an idiot. He saw more of that horror than I did. I liked him too. I never even got to say goodbye. I didn’t know it was goodbye. I didn’t know.
———–
A girl there told me then, conversationally, that she wets the bed.
I didn’t ask for added details; she expounded anyway. Her essay was about dealing with bed wetting. I know this because she told me that’s what it was about, and she told me it was happening still. While she was talking about bed wetting, while my eyes were still wide open in surprise – that I was participating in this conversation, she fished a zip-lock bag of panties out of her backpack to show me the partial remedy for her problem. I guess it’s a good thing she isn’t shy about it.
–
Another girl went hiking when she had the onset of a cold, and the cold got worse in the cold weather. She went back inside, ate soup, and used blankets. She warmed up and didn’t remain sick forever. It’s an encouraging, if not a very engaging narrative. At that point I was just glad that sandwich bags of tiny undergarments weren’t being waved at me.
—————
When we were in Colorado, “Roberta” and I decided to: “run some errands”, just the two of us.
We stopped in an adult boutique and sifted through the underwear. …All of it. We were in there for a long time, pulling out items we each were interested in seeing her wear. We had similar tastes in most things, almost everything, including lingerie. She had me come in the dressing room with her, for my opinion and so I could run out to find things in other sizes, as needed.
I always loved that woman. That sentiment was the same as ever, but the setting made me realize that: I had never seen her naked under bright florescent lights before. There were marks on her that I never noticed in her own bedroom, or in mine, nor any of the other private places. I don’t know what made them. I knew there had been an ‘unfortunate past’, but it was in the past, and she would always be safe from that kind of nonsense with me. I didn’t worry about the lines on her backside then. It was the curtains, as sheer as they were, the suggestion of privacy that didn’t offer any. That’s what divided my attention then. The marks she would tell me about, or never tell me about, as it suited her, when it suited her.
So she put things on and took them off. There were snippets of discussion in between the bouts of groping and making out and underwear modeling. You need to test the quality of those things before you commit to buying, don’t you?
And sometimes, at night on my own, I’d think about what was to come. I’d wonder if the next time I saw her she would be wearing that one thing we got, or any of the others. These were “fantasies” that really would come true …and didn’t. …I wish we hadn’t taken our time with them. I never got to see her in, or freshly removed from most of what we bought at that shop that day. It ended – all of a sudden, horribly, violently, unexpectedly.
————
I felt a tug at my side as I was moving between tables, and I told that kid to quit trying to steal my pen …or come up with the money and a copy of monster hunter. Monsters need hunting, badly. He looked playfully discouraged, then tried again, and again, and some more times.
Another boy there wasn’t writing. This one was languishing, exasperated, with a face that made you think he had taken all of the obstacles from the rest of the class, as if their lives were laughably easy compared to the ordeals that he faced.
“Are you alright?” I asked with hesitant concern. I knew that this one was advanced in “the dramatics”.
“Well”, he launched into it, “we were supposed to have the top of the box ready to glue today, for our project for the festival, but my partner is not here, so I don’t have the box lid ready to glue and the whole thing is going to be ruined if we don’t get it done, and I can’t get it done without that piece of cardboard, and I can’t do it all by myself, so it’s going to be ruined”
“So …this is something you haven’t overcome.”
“She’s sick all the time and she knew we had to glue the top of the box sometime and…..
And I thought about telling him what other horrors the world held in store. Someday you’ll come home and find the people in it broken beyond anything you can do to repair. Her cheeks were dry the night he tried to kill her but she rarely wore shoes and her feet kept bleeding. I cleaned up all the glass. I wasn’t the one that broke it, but I didn’t want her or her son to be hurt anymore. I cleaned up all the glass, but she kept pacing and her thin red footprints …they still, they keep reappearing. Her cheeks were dry the night he tried to kill her. And there were 2 tears when she made you leave. She made you leave so she could let her murderer back in.
It never stops.
I didn’t tell that to a second grader. I don’t tell most people.
I think I wandered away from that boy. My problems aren’t his. My pen isn’t worth $5,000. I’m not the one who tried to murder her. I only tried to help, I tried so hard to help. There isn’t any help. Some ideals you won’t achieve, some obstacles you can’t overcome.
Sometimes the troubles win. Sometimes they take everything
–
I drew a cartoon dragon on the back of a permission slip. It was eating bottle caps. I gave it to the kid who was going to the dump on his birthday.
The yellow green in the $5,000 pen was starting to run low, the way the black had.
I never went to sleep last night, thinking that would make me tired tonight, so I could go to sleep and wake up earlier and get to your house: earlier. It’s a good plan, but I do this all the goddamn time and it never works out. I always end up doing extra things more slowly and still wind up getting to sleep late. I’ll get up regardless. I need to. It’s been more than …nevermind, the old man next door said hello to me a few days ago. I substituted at a school up the road last Tuesday, which is the other most recent time I saw any other people. They were second graders. This one kid had a cool sweatshirt that he kept forgetting everyplace. It didn’t fit me. Why the hell am I talking about this?
How I feel about fish:
I like fish
…therefore I don’t eat them.
And anything in a sauce actually makes me wildly sick. – I’m glad you thought to ask.
Have you been to that giant Chinese Supermarket on the way to your house? I’m just curious if they have houtou. It’s a thick chewy noodle you put in a pumpkin miso soup. It made me a little fat. That and the fact that you only have heat in the one room you have the only heater in, so you stay mostly motionless beside it the entire winter – just to feel any warmth. You can also cook houtou on top of the heater, instead of standing in the cold kitchen. It’s getting chilly. I wonder if that kid just leaves sweatshirts everywhere, all the time.
It didn’t fit me.
It’s good you asked if I have your number. I do have it, but I realize now that I haven’t charged my phone in …probably weeks.
Is your book “dropping” at midnight? Do you want photos of people holding it to post on facebook – to advertise?
Sometimes we tossed theories around on the matter. My mother would say: “she just never met the right person”. My father’s favorite answer was: “She’s probably a dyke”, but they didn’t know, and none of us would pry.
We didn’t see her often. She lived a little too far away. When we did go to visit, she would be very pleased to see us, and after a little chatting and a little snacking, she’d take us all out to eat.
“Get whatever you want. I’m paying!”, she would declare, staring pointedly at my father.
We were usually finished before the two of them would begin to argue, again, over who got to pay the bill. It frequently came to a standstill between them, and another pot of tea while we waited them out. The waiters usually deferred to our aunt in the end.
She had her ways.
I never enjoyed being stuffed in the back of the car between my brother and sister. It was all jostling and elbows, both ways, from both of my siblings, but I liked visiting Old Aunt Ruth. She gave me books most times we saw her, and I’d read them as we drove home. On most of those trips there was one moment where I would put the books down and listen, because someone would often ask it again: “She’s so nice! Why was Old Aunt Ruth alone all her life”?
–
When we were younger, at our cutest, she took us to play shuffleboard in the community room of her retirement home. Other well meaning old ladies would see us and make excuses to come and linger. Old Aunt Ruth was proud to be seen with what little family she had then.
When she was well older, the shuffleboard ceased, but we still stopped in a few times a year. She was still very happy to see us, all of us, but I was the only one she pulled aside.
I don’t know how she knew, if she really was that perceptive, but it seems so. I had thought it was a natural, normal old lady speed when I would help her walk here and there, up the steps, to and from the car. Now I suspect she was tarrying on purpose.
In one of those moments, the first time she said it to me, I was still in junior high school: “Don’t you wind up like me Ryan. You’re a good boy. Find somebody. … There are some girls over there. They look nice. Why don’t you talk to them?”
She said it several other times too, more frequently as we both got older, but I never did talk to those girls, whoever they were on those occasions. What would I say? And what would be the point of it? Old Aunt Ruth lived too far away for me to go back and see random girls in her area with any frequency, but she was right.
Those girls did look nice.
–
When I was in high school I had heard it several more times, her plea. In those moments, she told me something of her regret. That, I think, she shared only with me.
We knew, all of us knew, at least in a theoretical sense, that she didn’t have as much time to spend with us anymore. She was already older than anyone I’ve yet met. That long lost love of her life, the one she confessed she had longed for …and for so long, it probably wouldn’t arrive in time for her.
But me? Why worry for me? The future was limitless, and I was a good kid. Surely it would work out. She might even see that still.
–
She was 98 when she died.
We weren’t there. Nobody she knew was.
She lived alone. She died that same way.
We did get to see her before it happened. I still rarely ever spoke to people without good cause, but this was my Old Aunt Ruth. There had always been an Old Aunt Ruth. I would like for there to always be an Aunt Ruth, not necessarily one as old as she was, but it would be a shame if she couldn’t make it to a hundred. I tried to cheer her on. I asked if she could wait.
“You’re almost there Aunt Ruth! You can do it!”
–
But she sighed, and sounded more tired than I had ever heard her:
“No. …I don’t want to keep living. I’m ready.
…I was ready a long time ago.
There’s nothing here for me now.”
–
Then… she warned me again.
With all the others in the room this time, she said it for the last time:
“Don’t be like me Ryan. Don’t you end up like me!”
–
–
And I tried.
–
I tried because she told me to and because, eventually, I knew: living without anyone to care for, without anyone there for you, it is lonely.
So I went away.
I went to the depths of loneliness. I even married someone angry and violent, because I had been so alone for so long.
Then, when I was 37, when I was divorced and back in the land that I was born in, for the first time, there was someone special.
She wasn’t someone to escape isolation with.
She was what I had always hoped to find one day.
She was someone I would want to introduce to my Old Aunt Ruth, to reassure her:
“Don’t worry about me anymore Aunt Ruth. See? I’ll be alright now.”
–
–
But my Old Aunt Ruth died a long time ago.
–
And the hope that I had, the “love of my life”…
–
Her ex-husband came to murder her.
–
And she is gone now too.
AndI am alone.
And I wonder: Will my brother’s children know that I had loved someone? Will they know I would have never left her? Will they know the way their Old Uncle Ryan was left,
It’s nice that people don’t shy away from me anymore.
They don’t steal frequent furtive glances, and they don’t stare openly, with their mouths – similarly – openly. It’s been a little over a year since anyone has asked me if I can use chopsticks, and I don’t miss it,
but it’s been that same amount of time since I’ve seen anyone who would ask me anything.
I exaggerate to some extent.
I do see people out driving on their lawnmowers from far off while I am moving quickly in my bicycle spandex. I don’t stop at the side of their properties to try and flag them down to shout a forced conversation over the loud sounds of lawn mower engines; I don’t have anything to say, and I shouldn’t be outside for very long either, not with all the homework I always have due. I get out for an hour or three, about twice a week, just to get a little exercise and to keep from sitting and staring at drawing paper for all of my life.
I didn’t have either of my bikes for the first two months I was home from Japan, so it was very nice to have my brother in law’s old mountain bike on hand. He lent it to my father who is too small to use it -and other assorted excuses.
My legs don’t reach
I can’t get the helmet to fit
I already poured a drink
There are mosquitoes
There are bees
And bears
It’s too hot
It might rain
I just ate
Neil Cavuto’ll be on in another hour and a half and I don’t want to miss it.
My shoulder hurts
And my back
Your mother hid my socks
It suited me well in a pinch at least (the bike).
The leaves had already passed their peak of autumn colors when I arrived back, but it was nice to see them raining down on all sides while I was lost in the woods. The fact that I was lost in the woods was less nice. I don’t ordinarily get lost, but it gets dark here earlier than I had expected, and sometimes it’s easier to see a trail going one way than it is on the return. This is particularly relevant after twilight. Similarly, if it happened to rain at any point within a week of me going out, which was often enough, I would find myself carefully pedaling through water and mud so deep that I had to have waterproof boots on.
After returning home with mud sprayed up my back, chest, and face a few times, my dad found an old rain coat for me to wear out on the trail I had found (lost, then found again). I felt a little stupid wearing a big long loose trench coat over a spandex bodysuit, but there was never anybody else out in the woods to see me, and it’s all woods out here. Had I had my nice road bike I wouldn’t have needed to go off in the woods to get lost…
November 11, 2012
How the hell do you bend a bike chain sideways without getting off the seat?! I don’t know. But I did it.
It’s just as well I didn’t have it then though.
The shipping company was actually quicker than expected, but I expected them to ship it to the east coast. They made me sign a paper that allowed a representative of theirs to sign it through customs on my behalf, but they didn’t do that. It arrived in LA and a lady from a company I never heard of contracted me to say that I would have to go clear it through customs before it could leave the port (in LA?) Neither her explanation, nor her English were at all clear and when I asked her to clarify the meaning, I just got the original message sent back to me once again. It took an extra two weeks for me to decide to take her at her barely comprehensible word, and because it had been delayed that long, customs decided to inspect the container it was in, which I had to pay them for. Eventually I did drive down to Newark to show them the papers I had, and two weeks with no bike after that, I was able to rent a truck and go to some other industrial city to pick up my stuff.
I was glad to get my 2 nice bikes, paints, and paintings back, but I had to spend about 5 hours I could ill afford fitting them back together so that they could be used. I had spent 2 weeks sitting perfectly still (with no bike), so I was okay with not doing quite as well on my homework on that one occasion.
It wasn’t until the week before Christmas, when the semester had finally ended, when I was finally able to find the time to open up the last few boxes. The shipping company had taken everything I owned and stacked it in a 6 foot tall tower. The box on the top was heavy. The box on the bottom of the stack was the nicest TV I ever used to own. Sadly, it had been crushed, perhaps crushed beneath my favorite dishes, which had also been crushed. I had been worried about the carbon frames of my 2 bicycles when I got them out from near the bottom of the stack, but they haven’t fallen apart underneath me so far. The insurance took half a year, but it did pay me a large part of what the TV had cost. It was still practically new. I don’t have a job anymore, so having the money is nice. On the other hand, it’s a terrible waste of a very nice TV, a big one, the only one I ever bought. My old mother in law had marched me in and out of 3 stores for most of a full day, trying to play them off one another to get me a good deal on it. She was a good lady. I don’t miss her at all.
——
When I was wondering whether I should come back to this country I did an internet search to see what sorts of single women were in these parts:
Large ones!
Large ones, and old Russian women that want someone to help raise their teenage children, and one or two nice looking ones also, so that you could almost be reassured that there were prospects, even if there were none. But even if there were none it wouldn’t matter such an awful lot, in fact it might be better to not be tangled up in anything before moving off to San Francisco (where my school is).
But that never happened, so I went from being self sufficient in Asia all the way back to the beginning: living in my mom’s basement. Except this time I have no job, no car, no friends, and I’m super old. I’m like a Russian woman’s kid myself, except at least the acne is gone this time.
It’s not really as depressing as I made it sound, though maybe it should be. I’m mostly too busy to ever give it much thought. I have to draw things, then draw them slightly differently, over and over and over. I don’t get out much. I said that. And it’s true.
One good thing was that I was able to meet an Australian friend I knew from way back, in New York City, one afternoon between semesters, late last year. It’s expensive in terms of time, money, and etcetera for me to take a bus in and back, so I only rarely ever do. But if you weigh taking a bus into the city against taking 2 planes and several busses from Australia, it’s not so bad. She always used to be very nice to me anyway.
When my bus arrived in the city, she and her friend were in one place headed to another, so I tried to head them off, and failed. I had been sitting and drawing for 15 hours a day, sleeping too little, and occasionally cycling a few hours a week for several months. It’s a lot more sitting still than I ever got used to. Consequentially, I’m maybe not as quick as I always had been.
I didn’t stop to consider how long it would take to walk 76 blocks either.
They went somewhere else in the meantime.
After a falafel and what felt like several hours of a mysterious sauce dripping then drying on my hand, we met and went back to their hotel so her friend could do something. I don’t know what. She and I had a drink at the hotel bar then, which I took an odd pleasure in. It was good to wash falafel residue off my hand and to get off my feet. Being in a dimly lit bar, full of old people in business attire, acting as though I was also old and successful was fun too, like role playing.
The old part is true enough.
When I was in elementary school, I would imagine living in the city when I was a successful older person. With a $12 cocktail (+ tip), I contemplated the illusion that I was that person I once had hazy imaginings of. Of course it cost too much for me to get drunk enough to fall for my own ruse. I’m: nowhere near rich, not a necessary part of anything, and I never got that big neon Bugs Bunny wall clock. The bottoms of my feet were bruised too.
My two best friends in the city met us in the hotel lounge while we were waiting for her friend, who called up other friends of hers. Then there was a largish sized group of us, and more cocktails (which were cheaper), so it was fun. We went to an Irish bar where there were Irish girls who didn’t give an Irish fuck about you, and it was happy hour. We ate at an Indian place, because whenever anyone mentioned food I said “Indian!?” She told my two friends that I said that they were my favorite people in the city, which is a good thing for people to hear, and I never thought of saying it to them before that. (The qualifier “in the city” is also unnecessary, because I do plain like them, and honestly, who else do I even know on this continent anymore).
She also said I should “call her if I missed my bus or anything”. That sounded completely ridiculous, and ominous, like in a movie when someone remembers at the last second to tell another character not to do something that’s going to happen anyway – something that’s going to have a predictable disastrous effect. Really, it was strange to hear that because I’m still pretty damn fast, and I had plenty of time to catch the last bus.
I walked very rapidly to get the bus back to my grandfather’s house (where I was staying while he was in the hospital with a bloody nose (or maybe this time it was a falling down problem)). Anyway, I got to the bus terminal ticket window 10 minutes before my bus left and asked the woman behind the glass which gate it was departing from. She told me where to go and I waited there for 30 minutes. I saw a lot of busses coming and going, and I boarded most of them in order to ask the various drivers if they were going to be going through Nutley. None of them were.
It was the day after New Years, not particularly cold for that fact, but I was reluctant to sleep in the bus depot, because of all the murder and second hand crack smoke.
I exaggerate again.
The people stuck in the bus depot at whatever hour it was (11 or 12?) didn’t seem all that bad. There had been one guy who stared and muttered at me for a few minutes, but I could see both of his hands, and neither one of them held a length of piano wire.
I had time on my hands and she said to call, so I figured I ought to do it before she went to sleep, before I froze to death,
but I exaggerate again.
She said to call, but still I felt it needed an undue amount of explaining, because the odds of that happening had been so very very low.
I don’t know how often the women working at the bus ticket windows lie to people, and I assume busses do not regularly disincorporate, but something happened. She seemed to believe it too, or not care, so she invited me to spend the night in her hotel room.
I know what you’re thinking now,
Well, no, I don’t. But the presumption….
Doesn’t even matter.
I’ll clarify. What we did do: was talk and watch cartoons all night. Then the sun came up and we both felt sick from bad Indian food, or a virus contracted at the bus depot. I felt pretty bad because that bus thing was just too stupid, I hadn’t slept at all, my feet were bruised, I was almost vomiting, and I only had $20 left.
I got back to the bus terminal at around 10am, asked at 2 ticket windows where the bus would be departing from, got the same response both times, went there, waited, that’s where the bus was, and that’s generally what we expect. It was nice to have that extra time to see someone you like, whom you don’t ever get to see, but it was also nice to reaffirm that the transit system doesn’t fuck everything up.
Because I had been planning on coming back the previous night, I left my computer on for the few hours I thought I’d be gone, plus all night and all the next morning, afternoon, and evening. I don’t think that’s too too strenuous, but the hard drive cracked somehow. I didn’t have a computer for a few weeks after that, so I couldn’t slack off as exuberantly as I had been planning (my TV was also broken, hurray). It’s good this wasn’t while internet school was in session at least.
Grandpa came to stay for about 2 weeks then, after whatever was wrong with him was good enough for long enough for the hospital to boot him out. He’s not one to talk your ears off, and neither am I, so we had a couple good 7 word conversations here and there. I hooked the PlayStation up to my parent’s super large TV late at night when everyone else was asleep. I had to sit and draw all the time during my first semester (and second (and summer session and third semester)), so I wanted to take full advantage of the chance to do anything else then (there was little else to do).
We went to visit my grandfather a few times because he was no longer as diligent at picking up after himself, and why the hell not? I got him one of those devices that turns the lights on and off for you when you clap, so he wouldn’t have to sleep with a light on all night. He thought it was a good idea, and I was happy to think I had been helping, but it turned out that his hands were too boney to be able to produce a clapping sound. Shame. My dad had a good laugh over that at least.
It took almost a Japanese acquaintance amount of time to get it organized, but I was also able to get these two guys I worked with in high school to come out to a bar with me for the 1st non-annual “Pizza Hut workers of 1996 reunion”.
It’s been a little over a year since I’ve been back, and throughout that first year I’d only gotten out just those two times.
Well, I exaggerate once again. My brother and sister and their families took me to dinner for my birthday, but I’m not sure that that should really count, because there were no short skirts, and there were my goofy looking nephews. It’s a sadly different sort of thing; I like short skirts.
Going out and doing anything at all is fun though, because there were only the two times (technically three – with my goofy looking nephews). And I guess it’s really just the one that’s goofy looking, but he’s goofy enough for two. I’m not saying I was a child model, but you don’t have to look at yourself for long periods of time. At least these kids live in Ohio.
My brother had driven them all down from Ohio, plus the 35 miles to my sister’s house for the occasion. The occasion was actually the 4th of July party, but my birthday happens to be the day after, so we did something then too. It’s so nice to be appreciated. They even asked me what I wanted to do for dinner, which was mildly surprising.
I said: “Indian food?!!”
and they all said: “NO!!!”
They went to my sister’s by car and since a whole day would be wasted in going and sitting around, I decided to go by bike and skip out on listening to my mom talk about her TV shows and having to look at my goofy looking nephews.
My brother was saying something to me after I arrived about how lucky I am to be part of such a distinguished group of people. Just look at them. (How is it that they’re – all of them in plaid and polos? It’s offensive!) I’m bitter because I’m not even partially as successful as either of my siblings, but plaid and polos? Seriously?!
At the time I was covered in sweat in my bright white Italian bicycle shorts, and I mentioned that it was a shame that my good taste is not to be found elsewhere in the family, and everyone laughed for a good long while. Then I uncrossed and re-crossed my legs like Sharron Stone did in that movie I never bothered to see, and they laughed at a slower pace, and made me change clothes – so we could go eat at a place my sister wanted to go to, that was really far away. I certainly couldn’t have afforded it myself, unemployed as I was, but despite the serious mosquito problem, I thought it was very pleasant. The mosquitoes were the clear winners of course; they all ate very well.
Nobody baked a cake and I didn’t have time to do it for myself with all of the accelerated homework I had in the summer session, but there were spicy watermelon flavored martinis and my sister did offer to take everyone to a nice ice-cream place in that town. She said they had vegan stuff; it’s all I needed to hear, but my brother wanted to poop somewhere different, so we didn’t go. He drove us an hour and 40 minutes back to our parent’s house/ an hour and 50 minutes, all told. We didn’t stop to collect my bike, or to let me get out and get it home under my own power, but we did stop at a Burger King,
…to poop.
That’s important too. I’m not saying it isn’t.
My dad drove down and got my bike back by himself the next day while I tried to catch up on the homework I had a lot less time to accomplish. It was very very nice of him to do that/ to make that trip twice in two days for my benefit – without me. I certainly appreciated it; all I have is that bike, and a cat …with no tail, and fragments of broken dishes. I’m exaggerating again. I apologize.
———-
On the earlier occasion, with the guys from pizza hut, we met at a bar that they both knew. I had a long sleeved cycling shirt on, the kind with the pockets in the back. People laugh at things I do, things that seem perfectly reasonable to me, but what the hell, laughing is good. I don’t mind. This time they laughed for 10 minutes as they nursed their beers because I forgot where we were and pulled a cup of tea out of one of those pockets. I like tea.
After that, this guy who could never get a date with a girl back in ’96 told me about some of the truly horrible dates he had managed to get out on as the years went by.
I could hardly ever get a date with a girl back in ’96 either, but his awful dating stories are better. For that reason, it’s almost a shame that he’s done with dating now. (I’d certainly like it if I had more/ any dating now.) Anyway, he told us about a date he had at that same bar some years ago. He likes that bar, and I guess it is a popular place, because it got to be busy while we were there, secretly drinking tea.
For a moment he had a quiet far-away look in his eye, then he pointed to a two seat table in the rear by the restroom and said that’s where they were sitting.
It wasn’t an especially well developed story; I don’t know what they’d ordered or how long they were sitting when the problems began. But, at some point he discovered that his mom and a few of her friends had also happened to decide to meet …at that same time, on the same day, in the same town, at the same bar …all coincidentally.
But coincidence did not convalesce for the girl he was with, who was wary when his mother and many of her friends took turns wandering over enroute to the toilet to say: “Hello”, and “Oh, look at how you’ve grown!” He swore he did not bring his mother along to the bar on their date, but she wasn’t buying it and she left – probably hastily, perhaps as she was eating the olive or the candied cherry from the bottom of her quickly emptied glass. It’s a shame.
I love that guy!
That poor poor sad bastard!
He and the other guy both have houses, jobs, cars, wives, a paper trail to prove that they really exist, even children now too. I’ve given up on everything I once was to go live across an ocean and a continent, in my parent’s basement. I am 36 and the only friend I ever see with any regularity is my cat with a stubby tail and an infected eye.
This guy got back on the horse not long after that tragically poorly timed outing, and called up another girl he met online.
“Oh my god! Are you that guy that brings his mother out on dates?!” She exclaimed.
The poor bastard.
He gave me a word of advice on online dating, concerning the unmentioned/ greatly understated breadth of girl’s butts, which did seem particularly relevant to me. I had a date set up for the following day with a girl online who was my age and not too bad looking.
That’s a deliberate poor choice of words on my part, because she looked like a cartoon villain.
From the neck up she looked like a sexy cartoon villain (I didn’t see any of the rest of her), but that expression is probably due to her circumstances, all 7 of them. Before we met/ didn’t meet, she had confessed to having 7 children. “Oh… …wow! 7!”
It’s good to be open with those sorts of details, save everyone some time if that’s a hurdle they can’t get over. I was curious more than I was actually interested, and I still didn’t have even one friend remotely near to me, so I thought I ought to go and meet her once at least. Still, I think we can all agree that that is a lot of kids.
One kid is a lot of kids. (Some people can’t even get over the fact of a man with one cat.)
But add all seven together and you’ve still got less than a pair of teenagers between them. She was also younger than the old Russian women with the actual teenagers, who are in turn: too similar to my circumstances for me to feel comfortable trying to sneak it to their moms. So this would probably work out better in the short term …you know, until some of her children’s father/ her more recent old boyfriend got back out of jail.
If her butt was too big or not I’ll never know of course. There was a severe winter storm that next day, and a less severe one the next time we were supposed to get together, then we just never did, which is for the best. I can’t remember 7 different kid’s names, and no one is paying me to tolerate them any longer. Anyway, it was sound advice.
My no longer poor sad friend left the bar early to go get back to his wife because, all humor aside, he is just that kind of mamma’s boy, and not sad at all. I thought the other guy and I were going to be leaving then too, but he turned to a girl sitting on the other side of him and asked her if she ever talked to an American guy who spoke Japanese.
That’s a horrible line, and I would have expected for us to have left even quicker in the face of it, but I guess girls in bars hear a lot of stupid stuff. My other friend did all of the work, which works well for me, because I’m lazy and usually don’t have anything to say, but he talked a lot and I was the one to get this great drunken photo out of it.
If I felt like driving an hour and a half to get to that bar on weekends, I could get more photos or more than photos, but grad school: It keeps you busy! That’s perhaps for the best for those of us who are old and mostly friendless, in our parent’s basements all the time, and seriously really really old.
————
The exception to sitting and drawing, as I’ve said, is the 2 or 3 times a week where I ride my bike around. There are far far fewer cyclists in this part of the US than there were in Japan, a shame I think, because the roads are gentle, not heavily trafficked. They are usually wider than the expanses of dirt and concrete you find in the more densely populated parts of Japan I once used to see. There’s a nature trail nearby that runs across the state, which has more people (people in jean shorts on beat up old mountain bikes). I rode there fairly frequently before and soon after I eventually got my good bikes back from the international shipping company.
One day, while waiting for my two good bikes to arrive, I inadvertently rode my brother in law’s old bike to Pennsylvania, so I said to no one: “Wow. I’m in Pennsylvania.” Then I got the hell out of there because, …Pennsylvania.
(That might’ve been when the chain broke too …in my haste to get the hell out of there.)
Going the other way is worse though. It’s a long trail and in certain seasons it can be covered in slippery wet leaves/ in mud and horseshit/ or in wet leaves, horseshit, and mud. There are often fat old women on horseback who feel a need to ride side by side slowly: to distribute the horse shit more evenly all over the path and to talk loudly to one another so that they might never realize that they’re blocking everyone else’s way. One of the kindest ones I’ve encountered explained to me, gently, that bicycles can scare the horses, and that it would be helpful if I could stay at one side of the path and go very slowly (in my opinion I was already doing both). I once did that exact thing but much more slowly and a fat lady, whose horse was not moving at all, screamed personal obscenities at me because I didn’t also come to a full and complete stop in the middle of the path (and get horse shit on my shoes and in my cleats). I guess she wanted us both to sit leisurely, exchange romantic looks, smell the ordure, and wonder why she/ the larger animal didn’t give the poor horse a ride for a change. If horses are scared of bicycles moving slowly, I think they would be rather more afraid of having these fat old broads sit on them. It also occurred to me that riding a large animal you are not able to control, down the middle of a well used public path might not have been the best decision she made. In light of that, I can’t help but to question her assertion that I am: “a complete asshole!!!!!”; it wasn’t me casually crapping in the path, blocking the way, and doing nothing about it. I don’t think it’s me that needs to get off “my high horse”.
I won’t give her a sugar cube!
The actual surface of that trail under all that mess is cinder, which is bad for bicycle chains, so I try not to use it so often anyhow. The mud path I found to avoid this one is a lot more treacherous and it’s less fun when a pedal catches on a large root or rock and throws you off into the mud. Sadly, there aren’t any other places to use an incredibly expensive mountain bike in these parts, so I stick mostly to the road on my road bike. Albuquerque, however, was a whole different world. They had hundreds of trails, and you could see hundreds of the best bikes go by on them every day. An Italian rider took 3rd place in the 2012 summer Olympic Mountain Bike event on the very same bike that I have. In a relatively short time in Albuquerque, I saw 3 other people on the same bike. I spoke to 2 of them quite easily/ without having to dream up something relevant to say. They, in turn looked at me warily because I was on my uncle’s old bald tired yellow and purple thing he got back in the 1980’s. No one would ride that if they really had a new ballistic carbon, single front shock, hydraulic disc braked…
But my odd accent and rich purple sunburn may have made it clear that I was not native to those parts. I was sorry to not have my good one with me then and there, because the trails were so good!!! Many of them were made and maintained by mountain bikers. The weather was always good for it. (It doesn’t rain too often in the desert.) My uncle’s bike was unreliable going through gravel or sediment, particularly around tight corners (where there were lots of hungry needly cactuses waiting to break your fall). When he bought it, it was a true quality bike and he’s kept it well, so I was still able to maintain pace with the weaker people on the better bikes almost all the time. I went out on it almost every day when I was there. It was a damn fine use of time!
I tried painting a bit while I was staying there too, but acrylic paint dries extremely quickly in the best of conditions, and the desert sun makes blending colors more than merely hard to do, it was almost impossible. After a few earnest attempts with very poor results, I just stuck to bike riding.
I got great deals on the best bicycle clothing while I’ve been back here too. In Japan it would have cost me $150 odd dollars for a shirt I got off of e-bay for $45. I got this great flashy winter cycling coat which no one but me ever saw, because people don’t go outside in the wintertime in New Jersey (except when they’re skiing or running from their cars into their homes). I actually hoped it would be cold enough in San Francisco to warrant wearing it there when I go because it is so cool looking, though it seems I might not go after all.
I tried.
—–
I spent a whole lot of hours looking online for a place near to San Francisco. I found a whole lot of places, both in and near to the city, but the responses I got, when I got them, which was rarely, were almost always scams.
I assume they are scams because there cannot be so many “respectable engineers whose companies have recently won large construction contracts in West Africa (so they’re not in the country presently, but if I’d care to drive by the apartment and look at the outside of it, then e-mail them all of my personal information, and send a cashier’s check to West Africa/ Nigeria, they can then mail me the keys)”. I got soooooooooooo many e-mails that said just that, varying only in their odd combinations of spelling and grammatical errors. It was downright mystifying.
I say mostly that’s what happened, because some of the other’s were from engineers in the Philippines and Indonesia. 15 of them were from a “successful artist” who moved from (15 houses?!! in) San Francisco to Tennessee (?!) and has since struck it rich in the art world”.
Who the fuck would move from San Francisco to Tennessee on purpose? (And who would believe that?!) I was of course offended that so much of my time could be wasted in this manner, and at the sheer gall of these people to expect anyone to fall for that shit!
A couple of times I sent out photos of me and my cat (my best friend) to humanize my outgoing messages. There were about 10 people out of hundreds who said that I seemed cool, and that they want me to stop by their apartment after work that same day. Then I’d remind them, gently, that I’m in New Jersey at present, and it’d take me 3 days at best to get myself over there, and I never heard from any of them ever again.
These few, after untold hours of searching, were my most promising leads:
There was a girl who said that she was shy and that she loved cats. She was renting out half of a house in Japan town, but it turns out that there are other Japan towns besides the one in the city. This one wasn’t that one, it was one of the ones that was at least 30 miles away, and $1,500 – roughly twice what I might expect to earn in a month.
There was a guy with a room for rent above his room, but you’d have to go down to his room to use the kitchen or bathroom, and he wanted his cat to have unrestricted access to go anywhere in the apartment. I was okay with all of that, but when I asked if it was okay for me to bring my own cat, he said it would be so long as his cat got along with my cat, …and my cat is a jerk. I love him, he’s my only friend, and he’s super cute, but he starts and loses fights whenever he has the opportunity, and he doesn’t learn from it.
There was a friendly old man who called me a few times and talked at great length about philosophy, world travels, earthquake insurance, the accomplishments of historic Catholic missionaries, etc. He had rooms to rent in a mansion not so far from the city, but the reasonable rate he offered was still more than I’d be earning, and he wanted one person to take several rooms at that rate.
There was a girl who didn’t speak English well who only said: “Sorry! This apartment is far from the city. I don’t spaek English well. ”
There was a guy in a bad part of the city who had a 2 room apartment with a couch in the other room. He wanted someone to pay him $800 to come in quietly after he was asleep, not make any noise, not touch his stuff, and leave before he woke up every day. You couldn’t leave your stuff there either. Good deal eh?!
There was a place where you could share a room with 4 people in 2 beds. There were 3 other rooms in that house that worked the same way. That’s 16 people: 4 rooms (8 beds), one kitchen, one parking spot, one and a half bathrooms, a thousand dollars per month, plus utilities (but at least the utilities would be split 16 ways).
There was a cabin in a Tantric training house, where they’d wake you up at 5am everyday for the morning community meditation. The monk with the long name who offered to explain it to me further on Skype must have been too tired from all that waking up early to ever check his e-mail beyond that first time. That wasn’t near or cheap either.
These are just some of the ones I remember that actually weren’t scams. Most of them were scams, bad ones!
A guy in my classes who lives in different states in different seasons said he’d be glad to share a place with me, but after he saw the city, he decided that he didn’t like cities, so why did I return to the US?
Racism?
I like the homes they have here (in this country) very well anyway. They are insulated, and it doesn’t stink of kerosene every few hours when you’re required to shut the heater off and clear the fumes. The heaters don’t need to be shut down, and the outer walls have insulation, and there’s more than a single thin pane of glass keeping the inside and outside separate (separate in principle, but not degree).
In the earlier part of summertime there were fireflies here. I saw them through the windows when I went upstairs to use the bathroom. I always talked about all of the fireflies we had in the US, but I didn’t get to see very many this year because I did a summer semester, which is a semester’s worth of work in seven busy weeks. It’s enough time to finish things reasonably well, and to absorb the basic ideas, but there isn’t enough time to reflect on your works in progress. We had 3 paintings due the last week. High Key and Low key were our last two assignments. I liked that class because it was painting – painting colorful things with real colors, not drawing minutiae in earth tones with clumsy thick expensive fragile pastel sticks, or minutiae in even more fragile pastel pencils.
I had to pay $10 to have a few pastel pencils shipped to New Jersey from California, because I couldn’t find them anywhere near where my parent’s basement is. They aren’t a big seller. I found them just fine by my old home in Japan, but all the pastel pencils there had jumped shelf during that big earthquake. Every time you tried to sharpen one, the already fractured pastel core would just fall out on the floor. After riding my bike in and out of the adjoining town three times for replacements, I bought some crazy glue.
A week before the second semester ended I was still working hard on all the projects that were coming due. My mom and dad went to visit my grandfather 4 or 5 times that week because he was sicker than usual. He wasn’t usually sick exactly, just old and odd. He’d sit in a chair and ask me to move his feet around for him (for exercise?). At 91 years of age, you have to expect some oddities and assorted health problems. He fell down a few times, and the doctors couldn’t see any explanation except maybe his blood pressure might have been a little low, so he very casually decided to have a new $13,000 supplemental heart put in. I was surprised he’d go to that length with little more than very tentative speculation on the part of just one doctor. I wasn’t surprised to hear he had continued falling down. (You have to do your own leg exercises people!)
I stayed with him before Christmas while putting in the finishing touches on all my projects and assignments from the first semester. He had had a cold, and it seemed to me that he was afraid of dying of complications: suddenly, all alone. I like him and I’ll probably die all alone too. I could do detailed drawings at his house as well as in my parent’s basement, so it wasn’t any bother really. I just wasn’t exactly comfortable being the one assigned the task of discovering him dead on the floor in the morning, but that didn’t happen. He decided to move to a place where people have more experience finding the bodies of old people gone cold in the night. He got a little angry whenever my dad referred to it as an old folks home, which sure made my dad happy. (He isn’t a bad person exactly, but he always votes Republican and he’s very enthusiastically negative about everything. I’m negative about lots of things too, but I would never vote for a Republican; I’m not a total monster.)
After the start of the second semester they recruited me to take most of a day off from internet school to put almost everything in grandpa’s house into a big truck. He sold his house to a guy that no one liked. I never met him. Grandpa never got the money. It wasn’t a swindle or anything, though that guy did try to pull one, it was just poor timing.
I was surprised that the phone would be ringing at 5am. The only person who would ever call at that hour would be my Uncle Stephen.
To illustrate:
We came back from the supermarket one day when I was little. I don’t know exactly when it was, but I was still dreaming of being important one day, with a neon Bugs Bunny clock on my wall. (These days I just dream of one day having a wall of my own, or even four of them.) Anyway, we went to the grocery store like normal, but when we got back home, my uncle Stephen and his whole family were waiting for us in the driveway. They had driven to NJ from Michigan without giving anyone any warning. His kids had my favorite toys submersed in a mud puddle in the driveway, which I can see now is not a big deal. Our dog barked at their dog once. The other bigger dog barked back better, and ours hid from it, under my parent’s bed for that whole half week they were there. My mom told me to take a shower one night when no one else was using it, and Uncle Stephen took a Polaroid picture of me, pantless, trying desperately to get through the bathroom door before he could take the picture. He showed it to everyone, and made copies, and mailed them to us periodically, just to be sure it wouldn’t be forgotten.
Etcetera.
Pretty much anytime he happened to call, everyone’s eyes would go wide and we would all worry that he was calling with a carload of kids from the corner store, not Michigan where you expect him to be when he isn’t calling out of the blue. I liked him/ them all well enough then, and can definitely appreciate him/ them all now, or could if we ever saw him/ them, which isn’t likely. Albuquerque is a much further drive than Michigan ever was, and that was already much too far for those of us with little motivation to sit in a car for long periods of time.
When my mom decided that grandpa was sicker and odder than he otherwise had been recently, she called Uncle Stephen up from Albuquerque and told him he had better come down for a visit. He came one night and the phone rang later that night.
I realized when the phone rang at 5am:
that it was 5am already?!,
that decent people don’t call at 5am,
that uncle Stephen wasn’t calling either.
I tried to finish up what I was working on and go to bed before the sun came up. At 7am the sun was up and I was still working on finishing up “for the night”. My father remembered I was down the basement then …or more likely just happened to wander down into the basement for some other reason early in the morning, but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt here. He told me that grandpa had died. I said I had suspected something of that nature; 5am phone calls are rarely fortuitous.
They went off to the funeral home with Uncle Stephen shortly after, and I finally went up to bed …after I got a little more work done on a drawing.
(I sometimes consider moving back to Japan, because I sometimes go to bed at 11 in the morning, which is just an ideal time to go to sleep if you happen to be on the other side of the planet.)
I was awake again when they got back and Uncle Stephen told me a funny funeral home story. The way he told it was far more amusing than the way I am able to type it, but as amusing funeral home stories go, I thought it was one of the best:
When he was moving, my mom had asked grandpa if he had ever set up any kind of funeral arrangements. Grandpa said not to worry about that stuff because the old folks home had a paper prepared by him. (The old folks home had required something of that nature to have been taken care of before a person could ever move in.) They stopped in to get that paper, to see all the things that needed to be done, but the only thing written on the paper was that arrangements had been made with a certain funeral home. They then called ahead and went over to that funeral home to see what he had arranged. The people at the funeral home looked in their files and produced another paper. It said that he liked certain flowers better than others, and: “Funeral Arrangements: None”.
He was 92 and only beginning to consider that he might not live forever. I’ve averted death by narrow margins several times already, and I’ve also not averted it once as well, so it’s not a problem I will have when my time comes,
…which could be at any time really.
Incidentally, when I do die in earnest, I would like for my body to be layered in molten bronze so that its remarkable form can be encapsulated and appreciated by pigeons and park goers forever after. I’ve written it down here, please take notice, and yes, I am absolutely serious about this.
It’d also be very nice if arrangements could be made to scrub the pigeon crap off of my face every now and again, please.
———
Part of the reason I came back to this country was to see some people that I liked while the opportunity still presented its self. That sounds a lot more meaningful then wanting to stay in Kofu because I met a lot of sexy belly dancers, but even at 92, grandpa still saw the draw in that.
My grandfather’s funeral was on the last day of the second semester. I worked ‘til 4am, slept 3 hours, put a suit on, rode in a car, and told uncle Stephen that I ought not drive to Albuquerque with him, because 40 minutes in my dad’s car makes me car sick. I watched them put the ashes in the ground, tried all the types of wine the serving girl at the reception place listed off (but only the red ones, because the color is better), then we drove home and I was less car sick. I put my usual paint splattered stuff on, and I got back to doing the details on my final project until 3am (San Francisco time) called that semester to a final close.
Another of the reasons I came back from Japan was to go do grad school full time in San Francisco
…and racism. Lots of racism!
——–
Something about racism I had not fully considered before is that there is a measure of truth there, occasionally anyway, perhaps even often.
I had just crawled out of the Grand Canyon (a hot dry place). 11 hours of hiking in the desert – top to bottom to top again, in the heat and in the dry dry dry, it can make you thirsty, so I stopped in a Burger King in Gallop, NM on my way back to Albuquerque.
How about that? I’ve spelled it correctly three times in my lifetime so far!
I said: “I’m in Albeqerki Albertkerci Albacerqui. … I’m someplace. It’s hot out & there are cactuses.”
A guy from my old high school, I hope he was joking, responded: “Oh. Your in the dessert.
They have veggie burgers at Burger Kings, my brother thinks it’s a great place to poop, and it seems okay to refill your drinks there. This Burger King was busier than any other I’d ever seen, perhaps because of the desert and the drink refill policy, maybe because of the hookers.
I guess there are proportionally more Indian people in Gallop than other places I’ve been, at least – judging by this one Burger King. I was one of two “white” people there, which I rather liked because: it’s still more white people than I was usually around in Asia, and because I’ve always really liked Indian people, my romanticized idea of them anyway. I told people in Asia that I am part Indian because: I am, and because it makes it okay for me to speak less frequently about stupid stupid bullshit. They expect all Americans to be loud and chatty,
…and to own guns, to shoot at each other,
…and to wear their shoes to bed.
Etcetera.
I was just about done eating a veggie burger when a happy looking Indian man walked into the place. He said hello to some people at a table, then walked over to me for some reason
…I guess because he was high.
He told me how high he was (quite), and repeated that it was really a lot. He said that the girls outside were talking about me, and that they really liked me, and that he was super super high. In fact, he had never been so high before.
I was glad to hear that he was high, and that the girls liked me, but I didn’t remember seeing any girls.
He said that there were girls, and that they liked me, and I guess that he was repeating himself because he was so high.
“So could you give me a ride man?”
“I… … … … … where to.”
– I don’t remember what he said/ the name of a place and “just a little way” –
“I don’t know ___what that sound is____.”
– He repeated whatever he said before. –
“I’m not from around here. What is ________.”
“It’s” (he just pointed).
(I shouldn’t even be entertaining this but I like to have a reason to say no and explaining that I was concerned about carjacking, that felt like a faux pas, so I just said:) “… Is that far?”
“3 minutes.” (He could have walked there quicker than it took for the two of us to have this conversation, but I always wanted to meet a real Indian, and this one was in a good mood …probably because he was so high.)
“3 minutes? That way? And you can give me directions?”
This seemed like a really bad idea because it was my grandfather’s pristine, seldom used, fancy, red Cadillac, and if I’m dumb enough to let a severely stoned Indian man talk me into driving him somewhere we’d arrive at before he could figure out how to work the seatbelt, then I’m probably also dumb enough to get led off into the desert, shot/ stabbed/ or thrown into a hole full of scorpions.
My uncle and I had driven this – basically new red Cadillac from New Jersey, through Pennsylvania, through Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, maybe other states I’ve forgotten, 1,979 miles.
One more mile and I wouldn’t have had that old Smashing Pumpkins song stuck in my head for half of it.
We had a navigator which told us to go straight for 520 miles, then turn left. It took us 2 days of near constant driving, one four hour nap at a rest stop, no hotels, we mostly just went the speed limit and took turns. I was all for stopping off to see the world’s largest wind chime, ”just ½ a mile off of the interstate” (in one of those states), but I didn’t want to wake Uncle Stephen up to see what he thought about the detour. He had promised to show me a gigantic neon cowboy sign on the side of the road in Texas after all, but he didn’t say it was “the world’s largest neon cowboy sign”, and it was instead an all empty pitch black when we passed through that part of the world. I doubt if I’ll go back anytime soon. It’s a bit far for me to go by bicycle.
Why would you put something as important as “the world’s largest wind chime” just where millions of people per day will never see it?
Why couldn’t the red man speak plainer?
I thought/ hoped he was just friendly and wanted to go just down the road a short way, but he stopped and talked to a really large man in the parking lot and was handed something. He nodded at two typically “American sized” girls that were leaning against the back wall of the Burger King, then smiled at me in a “how about it?” kind of way. They were just standing and smoking and looking at us. He looked at me, smiled, waited, then did the funny eyebrow raise and asked what I thought. I said “alright” because what the hell else do you say? He seemed to think it was something really special, and I didn’t want to give him an excuse to piss in my eye sockets after he kicked me out of the car and ran me over. I generally trust people, but neither he nor I are likely to have legal access to a car like that again anytime soon. It wasn’t my car and I almost had it back to my Uncle’s. I’d have hated for anything unfortunate to happen to it so close to its final destination. Anyway it was just this one guy, and he was really high and I’m in better shape than he was, so I just figured I’d make sure not to stop and let him off anywhere that was potentially dangerous, …inside an abandoned warehouse, in the midst of a gang of toughs…
But I said “alright”, which maybe sounded like: ”alright” of another variety, and he waved one of the girls over. He told her to get in the front. (So she could steer the car safely while he strangled me from behind?) I told her it’s better in the back because I had my bag and some things on the front seat, but she passed it all back to her brother while I was saying this. (So he could pick through it while she distracted me? There was nothing in it anyway. I had less than $20 on me this time too.) I consoled myself with the knowledge that they were going to go to the same place, that it was just 3 minutes, and memories can return in time if you happen to get beaten over the head. (It’s sad that I know this from experience.) She put her hand on my thigh and told me to turn left, which was in stark contrast to the direction he had initially pointed and muttered. I looked back at him to confirm this, but he just sat there looking …stoned. I asked her how far it was, and she said 5 minutes, maybe 10. Oh Christ! She said it was her brother in the back seat, and that she hadn’t seen him in weeks.
“When was the last time you were home?”
“Beats me. I maybe go back soon. Tomorrow? Get some beers first. What you do tonight?”
“I’m gonna’ find a guy, make $50-100, then get druuuuuuuunk!”
“Hey, she likes you!” he said again.
“Thanks. …?” (I looked at my thigh and nodded politely. I said alright, but it’s not what I meant at all. I try not to sound as shallow as I almost certainly am, but she looked like a cafeteria lady, and not one of the ones that dishes out the salad.)
“You gonna’ hang with ___whatever his sister’s name was___?”
“She’s alright” (“alright” – as in, yeah, okay, it’s a girl and I’ve seen worse ones on the planet), “but I really don’t have any time or any money. This isn’t even my car. I have to get it back to my uncle today.” We were pulling in at a grocery/ liquor store parking lot then.
“He hasn’t got money.” she said.
“”What you gonna’ do?” he said.
“Take me back to _______.” She said
“What’s ________.”
“Where you got me, …the Burger King.”
I dropped her back and asked him what he wanted to do. He pointed to the right again.
“3 minutes?”
“Sure. You camo?”
“What is that?”
“Camo.”
“Yeah. I don’t know that.” (He pointed at something I was passing.)
“What is that?” “Is that where you want to go?”
“It’s fine. Anyplace. You camo?”
“What is camo?” (I still don’t know.)
He pointed again, with barely enough time for me to slow down and turn, …into a convenience store parking lot?
“This is where you wanted to go?”
“It’s fine. You camo?”
“AH! I don’t know what that means!”
“You pull, you pull, camo.” (That’s helpful right?) At this point he pulled 3 crumpled up dollar bills out of his pocket, handed them to me, pointed inside, and repeated what was essentially incomprehensible noises.
Then he made a drinking motion, so for a moment I thought he wanted me to buy him booze. There used to be laws preventing “civilized” people from giving/ selling booze to Indians, but that was long long ago. Then I wondered if there was some backwoods redneck’s store policy keeping him from getting it himself, and I got to feeling a little riled up. I asked him: “You want me to get you booze?”
“What’s boots? Naw, you pull. Camo.”
“Can’t you do that? You’re clearly over the age.”
“No card, Indian, you pull, anything okay, camo.”
“Camel?!”
“Sure.”
So he wanted cigarettes? Going inside together was a great way for me to get him out of the car at least, an important step in moving this along, so I told him he’d have to come in too. I went up to the register while he poked around a shelf where he could watch, trying unsuccessfully to not look suspicious, but it was suspicious. It was totally suspicious, not that it mattered really. This guy was around 40 years old. Why would he need somebody to buy him cigarettes? But he kept saying camo/ camel/ come o(n).
I asked the guy behind the counter for a pack of Camels. He asked me what kind. (Christ, they have kinds?!)
“…Um … just …the regular kind.”
“That’s $7.95.”
(And this guy gave me $3?! It’s the quickest way to end it though. I handed over a $10, my only $10, and my largest bill.)
The super high Indian guy went out the door just before I did.
“Here. Camels.” I said proudly and passed them over.
“What’s this?” he said.
“What?! You kept saying Camel!”
“No man, I don’t smoke.” he said with a disappointed smile.
“AHHH! I’m sorry. I thought you were saying Camels.” I gave him the receipt, so he could try to take them back or trade them for “boots”/ booze. I bowed in apology, like a Japanese person would do, because I lost his last $3 (as well as some of my own), and what do you do in an instance like this? Well, …I got the hell out of there!
I realized only now, while writing this, that “camo” might have been short for camouflage, which might be a local Indian thing for getting somebody else to buy your booze. I have a cousin in Albuquerque who appears to know things. I hadn’t seen him since I was odd 13. He’s a good guy. He has a nice bike and he won’t talk you to death either. He told me later that a lot of Indians don’t have any IDs. You’d think one looking as old and plainly over 21 as him wouldn’t need an ID, but I don’t know how the law is down there. Anyway, I’m staying the hell out of Gallup from now on.
And Grants.
There was nothing wrong with Grants, there just wasn’t anything in Grants, so there’s no reason to have ever gone there in the first place. Another cousin I hadn’t seen since forever ago is married to a guy, who had a brother, who graduated from high-school there, …which means absolutely nothing to me either. Except that in the kindly spirit of inclusiveness, I was expected to go with all of them to the middle of absolutely nowhere’s high school graduation party. It sounded awful when it was first mentioned to me, and every other time it was mentioned, and it was at least that bad when I got there. Country fucking music!
The people there were all appreciably nice and friendly, I can’t stress that enough, but what the hell do I have to say to anyone I’ll never see again, and how the fuck can anyone willingly subject themselves to country fucking music (and for 5 hours!)? I asked the cousin that knows stuff if it was something that grew on you
(like fungus grows on things that are dead and immobile).
Do all people who move out there come to like that crap? He assured me it is absolutely not the case, but it seems that we were a serious statistical minority there. People sat, ate, and talked through most of that craptaqular crap, but big groups of them would all jump up and get in line from time to time to do pathetic cumbersome motions, almost in unison, with cowboy hats on. It was as though a platoon of oddly dressed fat people were trying to march somewhere away from the “music”, but they weren’t sure in which direction to travel, and they didn’t do the jazz hands right. I don’t know why certain songs got “danced” to, and certain others were not. All of it was equally terrible.
I used to feel nauseous whenever I had to listen to country music, and I hate it because I have a small measure of taste too. But despite this prolonged exposure, I didn’t feel sick at all; I felt trapped, betrayed, …and sticky. Sticky, because I found out that I have a nephew who, in turn, found out that he likes me, and has yet to find out that he likes me far more than anyone ever should (unless it’s a girl and she has giant boobs). The people working at the “buffet table” kept giving him cake, and he kept most of it, the sticky frosted portions, on his hands, around his mouth, up his nose, and on me.
I love that kid. He’s funny. Don’t tell him I said that, …or at least let him forget who I am first. Here’s a crazy photo: And another one: At least he isn’t running naked to the bathroom.
I ate more cake than I probably should have too, but I got a lot more of it in my mouth. I had to. The “buffet” was wanting. I had expressed some concern regarding a vegan + diabetic eating at a south western buffet, and I was assured that there would at least be salad and few other things. The “salads” were small paper bowls with 5 or 6 small fragments of broken up albino iceburg lettuce in each of them. It was better than I had anticipated. The “Dressing” looked like mayonnaise with one drop of red food coloring in it. I didn’t touch it, or the beans, because the beans were cooked in lard, or plain old pig fat. They may be the same thing. I don’t know exactly what the difference is, but it was off the table for me, and on the table, and on my nephew – who gave it his square best, but probably didn’t actually get any into his mouth either. I could go on: there was a vat of meat, a cheesy colored thick goo, wait, no: That’s all of it. That, and dinner rolls. I ate about 6 dinner rolls, each of them stuffed with colorless lettuce leaves, like a lettuce sandwich, which is a real thing for folk like me and not all bad. I even made a few to take down into the Grand Canyon.
———–
Like most things I do, I just did it without any sort of plan. I always wanted to go to the Grand Canyon, and here it was just 8 hours away. That’s a long way away to be sure, but seeing as how I would be able to go the whole way in a fancy red Cadillac…
I stopped to see some Indian petroglyphs enroute.
I stopped at a place called Sky City which is deep in an Indian reservation, up high on top of a butte (an isolated hill with steep, often vertical sides and a small, relatively flat top). I had hoped to take the old “secret” staircase up and down, but if you’re in the last tour group of the day they don’t allow it. Other people probably know the benefits of planning ahead. I was happy to have arrived there 15 minutes before the last tour departed at least. It was really pretty there. You had to buy a pass to get in, and add another little bit of money if you wanted permission to take photos. It was really pretty, so I took photos. An old man in the tour group with me said there was no reason to take any photos, because once you get home everything looks the same. To be fair, everything in the southwest is the same color, except for their casinos, which the bus driver recommended everyone visit and enjoy their stay at. I didn’t go.
It was too dark to have gone to the Petrified Forest on the way there, but I stopped on the way back, before I had lunch and forced tobacco on the poor stoned Indian.
I didn’t know anything about the arrangement of the Grand Canyon, I just happened to pull in late at night and park near to a sign. That sign had enough information for me to surmise that I’d need a permit to go down to the bottom, which is not exactly true, just if you mean to stay overnight. I looked out over what I assumed was the completely dark and undiscernable canyon, then I went and parked by the office that gave out permits. I didn’t know that you needed to reserve a permit, and I still don’t know how long in advance you ordinarily need to do it. I went in that office at 8:05am. (I didn’t want to have them feel rushed by going in at exactly 8am.) I was the 4th person in line then, which was close enough to hear one of the rangers mutter that they’d had 3 cancelations/ 3 available permits that day. Apparently, that is an unusually high number. The guy ahead of me already had a permit, but he wanted to bring one more person with his group, but it was one more than his permit allowed, and they don’t allow for any one person to have 2 permits, so he and his one extra person lost out on getting it. The ranger offered the last one to me, and I was glad to have it then, because I wasn’t going to drive all the way back there from New Jersey to try it again anytime soon, sleeping in the car is not too comfortable (even if it is a nice big Cadillac), and the lodging topside was presumably more expensive and more crowded. The guy behind me was from Germany and he was on his own too. I learned that when I turned around to ask if he knew anything about permits. The ranger saw that we were at least civil with each other and suggested I split the campsite with him, which I was only too happy to do. It dropped the price that was lower than a hotel (if I could find one) by half again, being split two ways. The German guy didn’t have any American money left, so he paid with his credit card and I gave him cash. As a result, the permit came out in his name, he had the only receipt, and I didn’t have any proof that I was out $20, nor that I was (also) allowed to be down there.
I did the most sensible thing a person can do in that situation: I rented a road bike and rode it along the rim, all morning and some of the afternoon – 5 hours in an extremely dry climate at an unusually high elevation on a cheap bike they charged too much for. You only live once though, and I was at least living better than the people who got stuck on the mountain bikes. The guy at the rental place said he usually will not agree to rent a road bike to most people, but I said what size I wanted and I was wearing a cycling shirt. I guess that’s justification enough. I think I just had to sign a paper that said I promised not to try and ride down one of the trails that descends into the canyon, which I took to mean that I was at liberty to ride along the trail that all the families and photographers use to look at the canyon. It was fun darting around and between people, but doing things like that makes you want to go a whole lot faster, which isn’t as conducive to seeing the scenery as well. It is a nice Canyon, grand, as they say.
I felt a little tired: 5 hours at a fairly slow pace, but at that elevation, it is a lot more effort. Then I started a long long long long hike down to the bottom. Again, with the elevation, and in being in such a hot dry environment, don’t go riding a bike around all day before beginning a serious hard hike. I took a lot of photos along the way trying to catalogue how tired and dirty I was becoming. The last few photos I took, when I had finally reached the river, they’re indistinguishable from the darkness you can find in any closet at night. 5 minutes after I arrived at the bottom you couldn’t even make out the trail. I was worried then that I’d have to go searching around a completely dark campground for a German guy I’d only seen once. If he took his hat off, I’d never know who he was. If he went to sleep early I would never know where I should be. I didn’t even know if he made it down at all, but he did. Luckily he took the very first camp space. I didn’t have to tromp through all kinds of other people’s campsites and “knock” on their tents asking if they’d seen a German guy with a fedora. Lucky!
That poor guy brought an air mattress, an air compressor, a gas burner, a pot, a book, and a gigantic camera down with him. That’s a lot of heavy crap! “Fast and light!” I always say, except no one ever asks me, so I mostly just think it to myself – authoritatively.
I spread a shirt I wasn’t wearing across the top of our picnic table for a teensy bit of cushioning and rolled up the pair of jeans I’d brought and used them as a pillow. I guess people like to go down there to look at the stars. I thought they were nice. They’re brighter without all the lights around. I was a lot more tired than normal though, so I didn’t look at them for too long. It got far colder a few hours later, so I put the jeans and shirt on and just did without a pillow or mattress. It wasn’t comfortable, but there are worse things: carrying all that crap down and back up again for one.
We were told that there were good trails down at the base, but I had a look around the next morning and didn’t think they were any more interesting than the beige tones in all the paths around Albuquerque. The German guy and I had permission to stay for 2 nights, but it didn’t seem worthwhile. I hadn’t brought that much food with me either (lighter = faster/ easier). I ate the last of my salad sandwiches and started climbing back up. The German guy said he thought he would climb out that day too, he just wanted to rest at the base for a few more hours beforehand/ miss out on the midday’s heat on the trail. He was finishing up a tour of all of North and South America and had every right to want to sit down for awhile. He seemed nice. He took great photos, as one would hope with such a large / heavy looking camera to lug around with him.
It took me 6 hours and 22 minutes to climb out. I stopped once along the way for about 15 minutes to eat and to refill water. I had one drinking bottle as well as a hydration/ water backpack that had both run completely dry just before I made it to the first spigot, roughly 3 hours. I’m glad it was only June/ not as hot as July or August would have been, when they say that some of the sources of drinking water dry up completely.
It was dry, dusty, the air was thin, it was all uphill. It was hard, but I went like a locomotive,
a locomotive that stumbles.
I passed a lot of people. Some people tried to keep pace with me, none of them did. I am terrific. I got to the top and decided not to go back down there again if I ever did come back. I moved off to the side a little way from the head of the trail. I sat down to get grit out of my shoes and socks, wash some of the dirt off of my legs where my shoes had rubbed orangy brown against them, and to look at the view. People who had been hiking slower made it to the top in twos and threes and all of them nodded their understanding of our shared plight. Then an older portly woman came from the parking lot and sat 3 feet directly in front of me. I looked around a lot hoping to see someone who could explain that to me. It was a big open area. It was not crowded. The seating was just as good in any other part of it. It would have been clear to anyone with eyes good enough to see the canyon, that I was there, that I was filthy from having just climbed out of it, so what was the motivation to block the exact center of my vision when there were so many other – equally good spots to choose? It was just so damned odd. This is her:
“I hiked around the camp at the very bottom for an hour that morning before beginning the 6 hour climb out of it (9 miles and 5,000 feet up). It wasn’t crowded at the top, but for some reason this fussy old woman decided to sit right in front of me. — at Grand Canyon National Park.”
“ it was the place I’d most wanted to visit for a long long time. It was really hot and dry and the air was very thin there, so the hiking was difficult. I’m in reasonably good physical condition, but I sounded like Darth Vader coming back up. There wasn’t a lot of room at the bottom where you could go exploring either, it’s mostly just a long way down then all the way back up again.”
I figured that driving straight back to Albuquerque when I was that tired would be a bad idea, and the German guy had mentioned something about the sunset over the canyon, so I went and took a nap in the car with the windows and sunroof open. I wouldn’t say that I’ve ever slept well in a car that wasn’t moving, but I didn’t wake up until the sun had already gone down a fair amount. I took a bus to the opposite side of the park’s rim trail to see it from that big plaza where I wasn’t able to see it two nights before. I missed the better part of the sunset, and despite having had lots of hiking in that day already, I thought I ought to stroll the length of the rim trail back to my car and take in the view while I could.
That trail is all flat and easy, but it was a whole lot longer on foot than I remembered it being on the bike. It got completely dark before I got a third of the way, which I assumed was already most of the way, so I just kept walking in the dark for a long long time. Then I wasn’t sleepy at all, and there was nothing else to do there, so I started off back to Albuquerque, hoping to get a head start on seeing the Petrified Forest the next day.
That was nice too, though certainly not as “grand”.
———–
My uncle said he heard that I like Indian food, so he offered to take me and my aunt out the night I got back. The Indian place turned out to be lunchtime only, but he found a Chinese place, which is also nice.
The paper in my fortune cookie said to: “Be on the alert for new opportunity”.
I don’t really believe that a piece of paper inside of a cookie is the best predictor of fortune, but my aunt looked excited and nodded her approval. “Do you see any new opportunities?” she asked encouragingly.
“ …well, the waitress was unusually friendly, but I don’t live around here, so it doesn’t mean anything. …I could go stuff a bunch more fortune cookies in my pockets while nobody’s looking though.”
They asked me if they gave them out at restaurants in Japan.
“No! And it was horribly disappointing for the first year I lived there. You don’t even get them at the Chinese restaurants there, so I used to buy boxes of them whenever I came back home.” I excused myself, got up, and grabbed a couple more. (They taste good.)
The next fortune I got said: “An exciting opportunity lies ahead of you.”
She raised an eyebrow and nodded knowingly, the way that people do when listening to an interesting lecture, except this wasn’t an informative discourse, it was paper stuffed inside of 2 cookies.
“I wonder how randomly these are distributed.”
“Well, you should know, you’re the one who buys boxes of them.”
I laughed.
The waitress went home.
——-
The cousin who has the son that liked me far more than anyone should, invited me along on an easy bike ride with him and his friend, I think.
It might’ve just been that Uncle Stephen heard tell of it and “invited” me to butt in and go along with both of them, then came along himself too, but we all had a good time, I think. Uncle Stephen didn’t go the second time.
I think it was nice of him to arrange that (unless my cousin actually did think to invite me), but regardless, it was nice of somebody. Uncle Stephen also drove me to the other end of the city where I could meet them both times. I ordinarily have trouble with the concept of driving somewhere to go cycling, when you could just do more of the cycling and leave out the car, but I don’t know Albuquerque, or the climate well at all, which was evident by the way my hands turned purple.
I didn’t put sun block on my hands because I was going to wear cycling gloves, but then I remembered that I wasn’t going to be riding my own nice road bike, I’d be on Uncle Stephen’s old purple and yellow thing with the bald tires and thick rubber grips. You don’t want to wear good cycling gloves on a bike with rubber grips, because that wears holes in the palms of your gloves quickly.
I had a thin long sleeved shirt on to keep the sun off of most of me, but nothing on my hands. At that elevation the sun has less atmosphere to filter through, and is thus made more potent, or so the locals told me, frequently, …afterwards, when it already looked like I’d dipped my hands in a vat of purple dye. We weren’t even outside for 2 hours.
The second time we went cycling, my hands were improving. They were somewhere between a lavender and a normal skin tone, but they had, at least, stopped bubbling and itching. We had better luck in getting to an Indian restaurant then too. It was a buffet! It was about 10 minutes before the buffet closed. I did what comes naturally to me, and spent all 10 minutes putting food on plates. I think I actually had 3 plates by the time they started to butt in and break the buffet down. I hadn’t had any Indian food in over 8 months at that point, and Indian food is the best food. This, however, was not.
It was unusually uninspiring and it was confusing, because it looked so good (it was Indian food), but fell so far short. Also, because I’ve eaten so much Indian food, none of it in this country, it was hard for me to remember to speak English in that environment, amidst all the Indian décor, not that it mattered too much. Even though the food there was probably the worst Indian food I’d ever had, I was still so excited to be having anything approximating all my old favorites that I ate it as though the cook wasn’t horribly incompetent (he was), as though it was the last I’d ever have again. So I didn’t have to/ couldn’t have spoken that much (English or otherwise). Most of the speaking I did in there was to tell the restaurant staff that I wasn’t done with that plate yet, and no, not that other one either.
I eat slowly.
My cousin’s friend insisted on paying for all of us. I don’t know what the customs in this (my own) country are, but I wasn’t going to be in that area long, so I’d probably never get a chance to return the favor. “Aw gee! Now I have to give you a backrub or something!” I said, and they thought it was funny enough to repeat later.
They were good people. I don’t often meet any people, with all the sitting at a desk and drawing that I have to do.
I didn’t meet her, but he said his wife is an endocrinologist, which he told me has something to do with the treatment of diabetes. I have diabetes, but I never knew that. He asked me about how I manage my diabetes, and I told him how I went to my brother’s house in Ohio for Thanksgiving, and he had some spare insulin, and sometimes my aunt, who takes another kind of insulin gives me some of hers, and how I lived overseas for 11 years, so that I could get treatment.
“Don’t you have a doctor or an endocrinologist you go to to manage it?” he asked.
“A doctor?! How the hell would I ever get to see a doctor? That’s like $600, and I have diabetes, so I can’t get any insurance. I just try hard (not always successfully) to not die from related complications.”
“What do you do for check-ups, for needles, for test strips?” he asked.
“I don’t. I try not to get sick. My dad’s dad died when I was in junior high school, and we saved some of the insulin needles he had.” (I am actually using syringes that are more than 20 years old. I’ve been using them twice each, so that they’ll go further. If I have any really big problems before the new healthcare law comes into effect, …hopefully I’ll be able to get myself back to Japan.)
He seemed really surprised. That might’ve influenced his decision to pay for all of us. I hope not, I’d feel a bit guiltier. Apparently his car was broken into and some of his kid’s toys were stolen out of it while they were parked at his mother in law’s the night before, so we all have problems. That same week, just one street over, someone had stolen 4 hubcaps from my cousin’s yard.
I told my dad that when I got back to New Jersey (and we are famous for our crime). He said that it was probably all the Mexicans …and meth addicts. He’s a Republican, and he watches a lot of TV, so everything is simple for him that way.
When I first arrived back in this country and had no friends, basically the same as now, I’d spend time drawing for school in the basement where my dad keeps his office. All day long I’d have to listen to his talk radio programs with all these fuming Republican buffoons assuring their listeners that there was no probable way that Obama would ever be reelected. “Romney’s going to win in a landslide! He’s going to win by margins never before witnessed in American politics. He’s going to revoke Obamacare his first day in office, and that’ll be the end of it!” I don’t love Obama. I think he’s a thousand times better than Bush, of course(!), but I will never be behind spying and drone strikes. I was worried, however, that the new health care law might get called off. If those idiots on the radio and on Fox News had any basis of fact, which of course they never do, I would be trapped here with no way to see/ pay for a doctor when I do seriously need one. Luckily they were as wrong about this as they are about everything else.
My father believes everything the conservative media tells him, without question, no matter what they tell him, and he looked positively dejected when he discovered that they were completely goddamned wrong. He and they tried to blame the election’s “unforeseen outcome” on Hurricane Sandy, even if that is absolutely ridiculous.
The “super storm” struck while I was typing up the literary thesis paper I had due the same evening. I got a note off to the professor just before the wind really picked up, to tell her that the power would probably go out before I could: spell check it, submit it, (or get even halfway through it). She lives in San Francisco, where they probably do not lose power for weeks at a time, but she seemed to understand the situation, as it was well hyped by the national news both before and after. The power did go out soon after, and we were lucky that it was only for those 6 or 8 days. I had to try and catch up on a week’s worth of very hard work for all the rest of that semester, and I was not too pleased for that, but some people lost their homes entirely. My sister and her husband didn’t have power for 10 or 12 days, so they came over to stay for a little while. It took longer to get anywhere because most of the roads were blocked off by trees here and there and all around. There was a guy at the town hall on election day asking everyone where they lived and if they’d gotten their power back on. Most people hadn’t. My parents said that they were surprised that theirs was back on only 6 or 8 days afterwards. He said that he remembered how they hadn’t had it fixed the year before for more than 10 days, so he tried to bump us up the list this year – lucky me.
My parents said that the storm the year before hadn’t been nearly as bad, but they had no power for so long that they had to go stay in a business associate’s model home to clean up and keep warm. You would think, facing a similar situation, my dad wouldn’t have fired up the grill and used all the cooking gas to make a single grilled cheese sandwich, leaving us with nothing to heat anything until they did fix the power. I ate raw broccoli and cold beans out of a can and went out to piss in the woods when I woke up at night. I’m hardcore
…and practical.
My brother in law’s bike chain was not bent strangely to the side at that time, so I used it to go around slowly and survey some of the damage. There was an awful lot of damage to see. I could have seen more if I had moved more quickly, but there was no power for who knew how much longer. No power means no water, which means there were no showers, no washing your hands, and no flushing for more than a week. This makes: “not sweating” a general all around good idea.
The worst idea I had then was in ignoring the roadblock sign. Usually they’re just there to warn cars from going any further. “There’s probably a tree blocking some of the road”, I thought. “I can just ride the bike around the edge of it, or get off and jump over it.” I called it right too: tree on the road, gap on one side. “I don’t need to turn around and go all the way back the long way.” I slowed down when I got closer, when I realized that the tree was smoking. I slowed down more and looked at where it was smoking. You could see a little bit of flame there. I was on fire once, so fire scares me more than it used to. I looked at it, warily, from the opposite side of the road. Then there was a really loud noise over my head and I looked up and saw a loose power line whipping around above me. It quickly arched down and hit the ground less than an arm’s length away. That was alarming: the noise, the speed, the proximity, hot sparks striking my legs!
I left the way I had come: unscathed. I can’t cross electrocution off of my bad luck list just yet, and I am glad for it.
I don’t know what your thoughts on luck are.
My favorite sentiment was my Australian friend’s. She said that “luck” is bullshit. I felt lucky, briefly, when the summer semester was finally over, not just because of the gin. I made an awful gin drink the night the last deadline had past, and ate the 3rd and final fortune cookie I got with my aunt and uncle to get the awful taste of it out of my mouth. It said: “A special romantic opportunity is fast approaching.” or some horse piss phrased very similarly. It’s a cookie and what the hell does a cookie know about anything? I spent about a week and a half riding my bike around and enjoying the little bit of summer time I had free to myself.
Just as the third semester was starting up, I got a message from a girl who was using that internet dating site with all the older Russian women. She wasn’t one of the old ones, nor one of the very large ones, …and I assume she didn’t have 7 children (not that there’s anything inherently wrong with that). She was the only good looking one that lived close by/ one of the very few that I liked when I was wondering if I ought to come back to the US or not. She also contacted me first, which is refreshing, and necessary, because I am too lazy to put any further effort into that.
We wrote back and forth, slowly, just my speed. I wasn’t going to get my hopes up too high, but I was in art school, and she had her B.A. in art. She looked healthy, she seemed level headed, and I hadn’t seen a single women in almost a full year. She suggested we meet at a Buddhist monastery, an idea I was especially fond of, because it would be interesting to try and block out any awareness of someone you were there explicitly to meet and get to know better. She knew they had a system for people who were going for the first time. It happened to be exactly one year and one day after I arrived here.
October 6, 2013 4:30am
I slept for 5 hours. It was 2 days ago. I’m supposed to get up early tomorrow, and I’m still up now, because I’m just that stupid. It’s a skill.
All told, I had slept less than 8 hours going on the third day trying to get projects done to a high degree of finish. I was tired, but I wasn’t going to let that get the better of me. The head priest was in the parking lot when I arrived. I had intended to wait for the girl I was meeting, but he told me to go in and take a seat, and it was just as likely that he had already told her to do the same. I don’t think he did though.
October 7, 2013
Some days you wear your lucky underpants …but they just aren’t lucky enough.
She never showed, called, or anything at all, not ever again. That was truly disappointing.
I went back to the monastery several more times. Meditating with other people around is like jogging with a friend, you can’t just decide to quit after a few minutes. There’s something to be said for the activity too. People meet there the same days as all my school projects are due, and I tend to stay up very late working on the projects to get them in on time, so as the semester went on I went there much less reliably. It was also really cold in there.
There was a nice old Chinese lay woman who supervised some of the sessions. She was as bald as me and we spoke to this without speaking, not telepathically. People who speak as infrequently as her are better at subtler things like smiling, and shivering only briefly for comedic effect.
I ought to get back, but with the hour I spend there and the other hour it takes to go and come back home; with deadlines just a few more hours further off, it’s a hard price to pay. I stopped going altogether when I got a “girlfriend” because there just wasn’t enough time to do both. Now I think I might switch the two priorities and get rid of the “girlfriend”, or get rid of the “girlfriend” and continue to forget about going to this thing.
She’s alright, don’t get me wrong. Gigantic boobs ought to count for something! We like a lot of the same things: cats, vodka, video games, fit- attractive bodies… It just seems that I’m the one getting the short end of that deal.
Short and manipulative, and it’s not just her boobs that are gigantic.
After that one girl reminded me that there is the website where you can supposedly meet women, I put a few hours in once again. I searched within a 30 mile range and turned up very few, but a whole lot of women (few in number, large in volume/ god damn it they’re all huge). This one is a wedding photographer and she looks nothing like her photograph.
I ask her sometimes if she can help me out and take some actual quality photos of my paintings, and she makes sure I won’t be bringing too many at any one time, and I don’t, but then she tends to realize that she’s too busy, or doesn’t want to, which I can understand, but I’ve already put premium gas in the car, driven 45 minutes one way, taken her to where she wants to go for dinner, paid $101 for macaroni and cheese and cocktails with money I’m not earning, to hear how she’s too tired for anything else that night, and is magically – suddenly too busy to be helping me after all Even though there aren’t many/ any other women around here, one day surely I can do better. I might have to move again though.
We had to make an ad from a short list of options. There was: Lysol, Radioshack, Noxema, Coke, other things, and tabasco. Each of them was supposed to be designed to go with a tag line: “This was a strange hobby” for Radioshack, “Spanning the globe” for Coke, “Smokin’ ” for the Tabasco, which seemed the most fun to me. I drew this crude thumbnail and a few others before refining it further.I was pretty happy with the design by the time I’d gotten to the 4th version of this dragon about to eat a guy.I drew it much larger, but the hand wasn’t doing anything for me, and arranged this way there isn’t as much good opportunity to put the ad copy in.
I moved the arm down lower to make it look like the dragon was just about to snatch the shield away (and to make room for the text of the ad). It was at this point that the teacher said he liked that 1st thumbnail of the dragon holding the guy better.So I made the dragon holding the guy. I had liked the previous version very well, but this one is probably better. The part with the tail behind the smoke is a little complicated, not least of all because that tail ought to be in front of the smoke. After a week he said he still preferred the thumbnail with the guy being held down on the ground.
I made the dragon holding down a princess, and brought back the knight from the 1st value sketch. This arrangement is busy and poorly balanced, so I tried it with the hands reversed. He had said to keep the dragon’s head, and that’s something I wanted to do anyhow, but to do that I had to have something to occupy that lower left area of the drawing (or the dragon would just be looking off into space).
This is still too busy, and I was awfully busy redoing this so much. He said to change the dragon’s head if I needed to …and that he still preferred the 1st thumbnail.
I’d already drawn about 40 dragons at this point, and I wasn’t sure If I’d have to make any further changes. I thought the 1st version was the best one (at least as far as ads go). This one’s also good, but there are problems with the diminishing proportions on both the dragon and the knight.
I didn’t have time to make sure everything receded properly, so I cut the dragon head off of an older version and taped it over the newer dragons head, blew it all up with a projector, and used pastels to do the colors.
It’s an ordinary September evening, 4 am, I’m sitting at the table typing for my school’s discussion requirement. It’s what I do now.
There were some odd soft plopping noises. I don’t think I realized that right away, but slowly it did creep into my consciousness. Plop …plop “Huh?” All at once I had to jerk myself around to see what was going on.
There was nothing there. That’s what you’d expect in the small kitchen of the apartment you share with no one, at the other side of the world …at 4 am.
I got back to work, briefly, then I heard those soft plopping sounds, louder and quicker, and I turned around again, to see what was there, but there was still no one and nothing with me. …Curious.
Then I saw, and felt a frog land on my foot.
“Ah!
A frog!?
On my foot?!
In the kitchen?!
(Indoors?!!!!!)
At 4 am?! (weird)
The Cat!!
My foot!
Ouch!!
Dammit!
The frog!!
Must stop the cat!
Must save the frog!
Away cat! Stop it!
Come here frog! Stop it!
Oh! It’s pretty!
Where’s my camera?!
Where’s the memory card for the camera?! (I used it to add photos to my school’s discussion page requirement)
Come back frog!
Away cat!
…Damn I’m sleepy!
Fuck it. How do you like my balls now?”
I guess we’re supposed to call them spheres. We drew lots of spheres. It seems like a simple thing and I’d like to tell you that it should be a simple thing, but it wasn’t simple, or quick, or even much good when the deadline came due. The teacher for the one class I have is Chinese (? -She’s probably Chinese.) and she (? – She’s probably a woman.) She doesn’t write in sentences. It’s an internet school, so all we have to go on is the written comments. “Good job work in progress. Nice edges some areas. Keep go on!” Luckily the other people in the class also leave comments, such as: ” Hey! I love your balls!”,
except nobody ever said anything like that to me ever.
It is really really busy though! I knew I’d be too busy to do it, and work enough to keep my Japanese working visa valid, so it seemed that leaving the country would be my best option. I’m older and older, and I live alone, and I wouldn’t be able to stay in the apartment anyway. – It was the only good place I had been able to rent for the past 7 years. 10 houses in 11 years! Isn’t that enough? What more could I expect to come along here?
Then I met the monk, the woman CEO with the pink wig, the big French girl with the sultry voice, and the Brazilian belly dancers! That, though they may not wake every morning with the thought clear in their minds, that is every man’s secret long held fantasy.
I always knew my luck would change in time. Surely something good would come along one day, and then it did. But only at the very end. I half expected that. I waited so very very long just to make sure it wasn’t just being shy and it maybe, might have wanted to happen sooner. More than 10 and a half years in and it wound up being 2 and a half weeks before my plane took me back.
Belly dancers.
The woman who ran that place, the one who put me on the TV show, the one who brushed cat hairs softly off of my face as she asked me if I was sure I had to leave, she was beautifully made! If I knew her, or the Belly Dancers, or any of them when I lived in that small terrible scenic town in the mountains that ate my hopes, I would have had something to fantasize about to while away all the awful empty time. I would have appreciated that. I could do with more of that now in fact.
I met her that one time that one day a month and a half before, then repeated to anyone who would listen, frequently, how remarkably well put together she is. Goddam! It made the monk look very worried for my sake, rightly so; she was fine, but fierce, and what was the deal with that pink wig? I’ll never know!
and:
Belly dancers!
The night after the frog and the cat got me off track with my homework I was going to get more things done. This too was going to happen for sure, until the monk came to distract me. He’s cool, and as bald as a frog. I’m bald, but less diligent about it. He shaves his head and face everyday, both with the same razor. Monks are supposed to do that, so he does that. I’m just too lazy to do anything else with my hair is all.
I was sitting at the computer, it was 10 pm. I was typing something somewhere for another class when my friend, the monk, called me about the barbecue party.
“Huh? …Oh yeah. I think that’s over now.”
“Oh is it over? How was it?”
“I don’t know I didn’t make it either, I was trying to get a thing for my cat for the plane ride home, and the store was far away and the barbeque ended during all of that, I think. I called the guy, but his phone is out of area”
“Oh. No barbecue? Shame. What should I do with all the eggplant?”
“Eggplant?”
“I have eggplant.”
“Oh. Eggplant. (… for the barbeque)”
“Do you want some eggplant?”
“Eggplant?”
“I’ll give you some eggplant.”
“Eggplant.”
“I can come to your house.”
“My house. Do you know where my house is?”
“No, but I think it’s on my way home.”
“Um, yeah. Probably. I live near the one big park. …Do you know where that is?”
“Not exactly.”
“Do you know where that nice looking temple is?”
“Not at all. …I could find the station though.”
“Oh yeah, the station.” (This isn’t going to be a ‘just stick your hand out the door for a moment’ kind of thing is it?)
“Shall we meet at the station.”
“At the station.” (Well, it’s not that far away honestly)
“and I’ll give you some eggplant.”
“Eggplant. …Oh wait. which side of the station?”
“Which side do you live on?”
“I don’t know.”
“You probably live on the busy side.”
“Okay. No. It’s definitely not that side. The other side! I’m bald and you’re bald, so we can find each other easily (not that anyone ever really uses that train station to make it a problem).”
…so a nice Zen monk with an admirable lack of hairstyle was coming to meet me at the train station in 10 minutes to give me eggplant. I looked around for something I could give to him in return, because I had been in Japan for too long for that custom to have not settled in. I grabbed 2 cans of olives, but then I remembered all the beans I have that I’ll never be able to eat in 2 weeks time, which my “seriously very nearly ex-wife” would love to have, and would have had for herself in 2 more weeks. One of them would get 7 pounds of beans, one of them would get several cans of olives. It took me 11 minutes to decide: who, which,
What?!! Oh no!
I thought he wasn’t there because he saw that I wasn’t there and went to the busy side (which is still nothing at all like “busy”) to look for me. I knew if I went to the busy side to look for him looking for me, I would probably think that I missed him coming back to this side to look for me – if and when I didn’t see him. He was later than I was late was all it was.
I showed him where my house is after I met him there, because he suggested coming over to take me to see his temple someday.. He said he made mountain bikes trails all around his temple too, just the sort of friend for me. I like this guy for so many reasons! Most of them because of his hairstyle. He doesn’t have one.
He came inside to see the paintings I couldn’t show him, because I put them all in boxes already. I tried to give him more things that my “very nearly will be my ex-wife” would have wanted to have for herself, but being a monk, he didn’t want to carry away a lot of my unused alcohol.
I never had the foresight to drink that entire large bottle of very expensive sake, or any of the smaller bottles of flavored boozes from the south, and I shouldn’t drink – at home – in my kitchen – while doing graduate school online.
I have a cultural studies class:
“I think this writer uses the shifting narratives to demonstrate different aspects of the culture, we could not realize as easily if the novel stated everything from a constant point of view”.
“Speaking of culture, did any of you guys know that you’re actually supposed to drink fine sake from a wooden box. No, seriously! That’s a weird cultural thing isn’t it? …But it tastes like I’m sucking on wood!”
How do you like my balls now?
Nobody answered this question for me.
I didn’t finish the project I was working on that night. No, I spent some time with a fine Zen monk, who brought me eggplant I had no opportunity to eat, and ginger which tasted every bit the same as any other ginger, except he told me how it had been growing at his temple for over 300 years. A small bit of supplementary info such as that can make you taste a thing better than you otherwise would invest the consciousness to appreciate.
He talks like I do too sometimes, but there’s a good dealmore of it. I would have expected a Zen monk to talk less …and maybe not be such a dirty old man.
“I like the way the young girls dress.”
“Really? …I like the way they undress.” (Uncharacteristically clever of me, no?)
“They look good though don’t they?”
“I like nurses.” (That’s just the honest truth.)
He came inside, sat down, and told me he was too late to go to the barbecue, because he had volunteered to teach Japanese to an incredibly sexy Brazilian woman.
“You should have seen her tits! They were magnificent! And she kept leaning forward to look at her notebook on the table.. and her tits would just hang down like this and….”
“Wait, wait wait! Like how? …Were they nice?”
“They were so nice! They were …Wow!”
“Wow?! Ahhh. (That’s not descriptive. …Wow sounds good though doesn’t it?) (Dammit!)”
The conversation strayed away from breasts to other topics, but I mostly just remember the part about the breasts, because he seemed to think they were really grand, but he never explained them satisfactorily.
It is difficult for a person to explain something to those who have not had the experience. That is also why the Buddhas keep quiet.
I thought I was being interviewed for a job when I met him, because I went in for an interview and nobody told me that he wasn’t a real employee.
Then he and I were sitting and talking for a long time; mostly it was just him talking. Very chatty he.
“I almost married a Polish girl once” he said, “but I told her that I can’t stand the cold in Poland, or the language they speak there.”
“It’d probably be warmer if you let your hair grow in.” I observed.
“Yeah. I guess.” (brief pause) “I almost married a French lady once too” he said, “but I can’t get a handle on speaking French at all.”
“I like your hair”, I said.
“Oh. This? Yeah. I am a Zen monk.” He explained.
“Neat!”
“Meh.”
“I didn’t know they had any Zen temples around here.”
“Oh, yeah. There are. …But I’m not really a real monk. I mean …I am, but I never wanted to be a monk, it’s only because my brother refused to become a monk, …and I make the other monks uncomfortable.”
“Oh, yeah. I do that too.”
The other monks don’t like to talk to him so much because he isn’t monkish enough. They don’t like to talk to me because I’m not Japanese enough, and probably not Buddhist. People in general don’t like to talk to monks because they don’t drink and they dispose of the dead (there are some weird longstanding superstitious bullshit stereotypes involved in that). People don’t like to talk to me because I’m not Japanese, and I probably can’t speak Japanese (even though I can).
They fetched him out of the back because they didn’t need him in the back, and because he speaks a bunch of languages. He volunteers there sometimes because he gets to meet and help people that way. Brazilian women with magnificent boobs apparently among them.
He was a good guy. I hardly knew him, but I miss him, and the belly dancers, and his frighteningly attractive non-boss, who was technically my boss for that one afternoon that she booked me onto a TV show in town. I liked her. She scared me.
The week before I moved away, he took me hiking on a small mountain in Tokyo with a bunch of his lawyer friends. I’d climbed this same mountain with my old favorite Japanese teacher about 9 years earlier, so it seemed fitting to go back and see it again when he invited me along. I thought it’d be fun to tell his friends that I was an assistant monk, he introduced me as a Tengu/ Mountain Gremlin instead.
All of this together time seems a little gay, but 2 bald bicycle riding social outcasts, with a penchant for pendulous Brazilian boobs ought to make the most of their limited time. Everyone’s time is limited, but not many people seem to realize it.
His friends were nice enough. I’d hoped that they would be a collection of other sexy foreign women he almost married, but they weren’t. – None of them. There was one woman, but they all had good fun going to great lengths introducing and treating her as manlier than the rest of them. He told them that I was married to a woman I never see who threw a pot of boiling hot water at me. “Why on Earth would she do that?” “Because there were 2 packages of spaghetti open.”
Their legally informed opinion on this was that it was bad.
I agreed, and we drank some more.
He woke me up shortly before we arrived back in the area we lived in, and I pissed him off two times. I’d have thought it would have been harder to make a Zen monk mad, but he really isn’t the traditional western Zen character stereotype, as has been mentioned. He woke me up at the end of the car ride and said I should be more careful about what I say in my sleep. I didn’t ask what I said in my sleep, but I did ask if the nice old woman in his temple was his grandmother, and he said it was his mom and looked really cross for a long time then too.
I’m an idiot.
He made me dinner anyway. I’m not sure why he wanted to, but there’s a type of noodle in that region which I loved to eat, and I made it fairly frequently for myself and for: “my wife”/ “my crazy ass wife”/ “my doesn’t live here anymore but we are still technically married – wife”/ “my very nearly soon to be ex-wife” (They’re all the same person.). I liked my own noodles better after all, but it was good to finally see how they were meant to be made.
I was sober again, with a very mild headache at that point, so we rushed back to feed my cat, then head off to my first going away party.
I like to have all my parties at the all you can drink place that only charges Y980 for 2 hours. It’s cheap, the waitresses look good, and the drunk people who are not vomiting in the bathroom are very very friendly.
I was peeing while a Japanese guy washed his hands, looking at me, intently. He stopped. (He stopped washing his hands, but he kept looking at me …intently, though I tried no to take notice of it.) He walked behind me towards the door, then curved in and came back towards me. There was now a face there, on my right, leaning in towards me – very close. I turned my head, slowly, still peeing. – I’m peeing in a bar, and a man puts his face right down close to mine and he says: “I see you!
…on TV”
“What??!”
“I see you on TV. Friday. I see you?”
“Oh!!! …Yeah, (sorry). That was me!”
“Wow! I watch you!”
“Um. Thanks.”
I finished pissing + got back to drinking.
The belly dancers weren’t there, I was sorry to say, but the woman who had me hired for that segment of a TV show went. Her one assistant came along too and spoke a lot of English with everyone. He is a big big Brazilian man who I hardly know, but I am very fond of him, because he is so naturally kind, and big, like Mr. Snuffleupagus. I couldn’t help but notice how much he likes her when it became more evident that she liked me. (Why is less evident; perhaps because of my beautifully rounded bottom? Anyway) I want to think that she liked me because I was on TV, but she liked me before, and she was the one who put me on TV besides.
She had him drive her to the after party which ended about 3:30am, then she suggested we have another farewell party for me (despite hardly knowing me). Speaking of not “knowing me”, someone called me at 4:30am when I had discarded my pants somewhere else at home with the phone still in the pocket. I wasn’t tired then, I just didn’t know.
She looked fabulous!
My very nearly ex-wife would spend so so so so so so so much time making herself look good before going out to the convenience store for 5 minutes, and she was remarkably high maintenance. I can’t even imagine what it took to make this woman look the way she did. I liked her too, although she scares me, but I was leaving, and I would always be too poor and too poorly placed to fit into her better place in society. She would have figured that out, I think. There would be lots of little hints that added up and up and up until she realized that I’m only ever going to be as well off as they allow a lowly immigrant to be there (low).
I saw her the second time when the summer was drawing to a close and she had had me come in to meet the producers of the show. They had been planning to have a Chinese woman come on and do what they had in mind, but Chinese people were running through Chinese cities firebombing Japanese businesses that week, and that particular woman was afraid the Japanese people would see her peeing in a bar and recognize her as being Chinese and …something bad. I dunno really, but it wasn’t going to work out for her that week, and they just wanted somebody else telegenic. (I don’t believe they ever even bothered to check on how beautifully rounded my bottom is. (It’s pretty nice.))
Before I went home they put me on a live televised telephone advertisement, in which the telephone didn’t get any reception. I wore a bike racing suit to the studio, because they said I could wear whatever I usually wear, and I usually go everywhere by bike.
The monk asked me which of the female hosts I liked better. I told him and he said, “No. That’s the one I like. You get the other one.”
We all had a friendly chat about how they’d go about filming it. They were worried I wouldn’t understand all the technical jargon, but were much impressed when I mentioned that I had worked in TV and radio in college. I was impressed that they asked me nothing at all stupid about chopsticks.
When they left, the beautiful boss lady went over the details again with us. The monk had to do a funeral for a young girl that morning, so it was up to me to get myself there safely. She admonished me, sternly, with a threatening tone to her voice, to be very careful in going there by bike. I couldn’t be late, and I couldn’t be late/i.e. dead. It’s bad for business (her business, the monk has a different sort of business, where me dying would mean more business).
I turned my camera on just in case.
He asked if she shouldn’t also be concerned for my welfare, and she relaxed. Her body was tense and even threatening, and it would have been a marvelous thing to see her look at you with a rubber body suit on (or off).
I only say that because she was as sexy as she was, and that was a lot. But she was acting not unlike “my very nearly ex- wife” used to do, when I also had done nothing wrong, and that’s why it was scary. This woman had a look in her eye that was a good deal scarier, but she was at least beautiful. My wife wasn’t unpleasant to look at, except when she was at home with her indoor face on, sneering at any opinion I offered. This one seemed to think well enough of me to have thought to cast me for a television segment, then she threw that party to celebrate it. That was the best party ever, and she really was beautiful!
And Belly dancers!
I had the best time then! I couldn’t sneak myself in right beside her, or the belly dancers when they arrived, because I was the first one there, because I went by bike.
(In an urban setting, bikes will almost always be faster than cars – in my case, a lot faster (assuming none of the cars hit me).)
They had this party at the Indian restaurant I always went to, because we all knew that there was food there which I could eat.
I only ate there, and I ate there very often. There was that time that my wife shouted insults at me for sitting next to her, after which she didn’t go any longer, but I still liked the food and I still went.
I walked in with my clicky bike shoes and the guys that work there waved me in as they always did, and tried to point me to my usual mini table.
Initially, they used to try to wave me towards larger tables. Perhaps they assumed my wife would join me there again someday and we’d need the extra space, but I always went there alone, and sometimes they needed that extra space.
This time they wondered why I insisted there would be 11 more people joining me. There was no reservation under the woman’s last name ( a common name), and it certainly wasn’t under my name (a decidedly uncommon name). While we waited awkwardly for anyone else to show, the guy I always talked to there asked if it would be the last time I came in. I said it probably would be. The monk came in about 15 minutes later and sat on the side of me (where I assumed some attractive women would go). He said that 10-12 more people from the name of the company would be joining us, so they pushed more tables together then. The guy who worked there asked me how it was I knew those people, and I reminded him how he was the one that told me to go see them about a temporary job. I also reminded him how I kept talking about that incredibly sexy woman I met at that company he sent me to, but he didn’t remember me saying that, which is odd, because I said it a lot!
The monk was on one side of me, a Brazilian/Japanese woman on the other side, a large funny French girl right across from me, then the best looking/ sometimes scary woman, her other and also amiable assistant towards the far end, the big Brazilian guy, the belly dancers! Oh! The belly dancers!, and their pimp/ event organizer – He’s cool, and I am jealous.
Belly Dancers!
But all of these people at that party were great! We were not afraid of each other. We did organize ourselves by status, nor by age. We were not stiff as boards. We did not make it a point to distinguish between who could and could not use chopsticks. – for a change. So refreshing!
At some point there was a new dEUS album.
The Brazilian/ Japanese woman could speak Brazilian, Japanese, and English.
Her French friend could speak French, English (with or without a cute French accent – but I liked the accent, so she did), and Japanese.
The monk could also speak Brazilian – or Portuguese, as it’s called, Japanese, English, a bit of French, a smaller bit of Nepali.
The restaurant staff spoke varying levels of either Japanese or English (never both), and flawless Nepali of course (Hindi and Bengali too perhaps, we didn’t need to find out then).
Portuguese and Japanese from the well fashioned woman in charge.
Etc.
It was a mess of sounds all around all night, people shouting all kinds of things at other people in other languages. (I can speak Japanese and English,and I did, but not when my mouth was full, which was often enough.) I like Indian food.
They got some Nepali whiskey for me and for the French girl, but I drank 2 of them somehow. Then I got a chance to talk to the better looking belly dancer out in the parking lot, and the allure of exoticisim aside, I was impressed at how balanced/ not crazy (and good looking) she was. She also happened to mention that she was single and she wanted an unattached man to teach her to speak English (and dammit I had to leave the country for some reason.) The head of the company waved me over to her side then and said we should do fun things like this more often. “I like to: fun things with interesting people too, yes!” I agreed, for all the good it would do me now.
She asked when she might expect me back, and I said I probably would not be able to afford either the time or money to return for 3 years. “3 years?” + doe eyes. Why those?
“Perhaps I could visit you in New York, or San Francisco?”
“What?! Oh please do that!! (Oh, but she’s scary too somehow.) Hey, are you single?”
+ that got me the polite reaction of a high society woman who is asked her age at a party. Her eyes narrowed and her head turned towards me even as her body turned gently away. It was alluring and alarming. Her assistant suggested we get a group photo then, so situation resolved. She didn’t kiss me then, nor bite my tongue off. Her assistant didn’t either.
I rode my bike around in the hills a lot, a lot more than I maybe should have with graduate school quantities of drawings to do at home, indoors, but the actual diet paid off I think.
My very nearly ex-wife was looking thinner too, but the overworked/ tired kind; she had to do all her own cooking and cleaning now, perhaps she finally understood its value. Those few times I saw her, she toyed with the idea of staying married, somehow, but I wasn’t having anyone throwing things hot and dangerous, and she refused to see a psychologist. She claimed there were no psychologists in Japan. I said there used to be a psychologist at the desk next to mine at school.
“No” she said.
“It seems settled then doesn’t it?”
“I have to go now.”
“See you.”
She asked me who I wanted to be the witnesses for our divorce papers. I said I wouldn’t likely be framing my divorce certificate, so it didn’t mean a great deal to me. （I also said it might be interesting to hang it on a wall opposite the marriage certificate, but that was just a dumb idea.) We toyed with the idea of not getting divorced again (a dumber idea), because she wanted to come to San Francisco, but she’s not able to handle the stress of living in another country and, again, I don’t want anybody throwing things which are fragile/ important/ potentially disfiguring when they hit me.
A week and a half before I left, I was reading some things for one of my classes and she called to say that she was coming by with our divorce papers. She got them at city hall during her lunch break one day, then drove 2 hours to her mom’s house to have her mom and her sister’s husband sign/stamp them as witnesses. She went over a weekend and asked me if there was anything I needed from her + my old town. “I have to go and leave things behind as it is.” I said. Going to her mom’s house was usually awkward and dull for me; I’m glad I wasn’t forced to accompany her this time (at the very least).
Paperwork procedures are important in Japan, so she went to the city hall where her mom lives to check and see how the papers needed to be filled out. How they do them thereand how they do them here is not the same thing, she later discovered. Also, for reasons I do not understand, she prepared a demonstration page for me to see how they shouldn’t be filled out, but she didn’t tell me that it was the way I wasn’t supposed to do them, so I made a small mistake on the first line and she got very angry.
She accused me of purposely ruining the paper, so that we wouldn’t get divorced. That sounded positively crazy and at that moment especially, nothing could have been further from the truth. I was even more afraid than normal then, because I was also trying to stifle laughter (at such an absurd notion). Anytime I was happy – when she was not happy, was a time that she was deeply offended. I wasn’t happy, but it might have sounded that way.
It reminded me of the time that I had my appendix removed and it hurt so so so much to laugh, even a little. But in trying not to laugh the impetuous to laugh magnifies, it was so painful.
We pressed on with the filling in of the form. She watched me very very carefully, and accused me of not taking the form filling in seriously. I wrote 50-102 like everyonealways did instead of writing 50の102, which is more formal. I suppose I should have guessed at that somehow. She then made the same mistake when it was her turn to fill out her half of the paper. (Nobody yelled at her.) There were a couple of very minor mistakes, so she brought it in to the town to see if it would work the way we did it or not.
They spent several days looking it over then called her to say that we were still married.
A few days later she came back with another form. We filled it in again, then knocked on the door to city hall at about 11:30pm. They always have someone at city hall to answer the door and accept marriage/divorce papers, I guess because there are lucky and unlucky days to do things. Our wedding wasn’t on the luckiest day, because that day was booked and twice the price, but as a friend of mine has told me recently:
“luck is bullshit”.
The guys that answered the door were wearing matching tracksuits and tee shirts. They looked us over like we were total strangers, arrived in the night to disturb their peace …and we were.
They ignored me completely and talked to her for about 20 minutes, just the way it was when we were married a few years before. The security guard who accepted our marriage papers never said a single thing to me, didn’t check my ID, didn’t try to verify my signature/ stamp, didn’t ask me if I wanted to be married. These guys in the matching tracksuits did exactly the same, and I was every bit as put off, and distracted, because …WhyTheFu_ were they wearing matching track suits?!!
Like most major life events, this one was a subdued subtle change. I want to say it was anti-climactic, but I’m trying to save that word for when I arrive back in the most rural corner of the US at 35 years of age and really need that word. The point is that, “my very nearly ex-wife” was now, simply, my ex-wife. I met a few friends at that cheapest get you drunkest place, and I don’t think I even remembered to mention that I got divorced. I didn’t even reflect on it overmuch: I had homework to get back to, and packing to worry about, and somewhere out there there are Belly Dancers, and no bad luck, and no good luck, just a lot of shit that happens.
“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.” …later
I put off packing as long as I could. I needed things to get things done: a table to do homework off of, dishes to eat off of, a bike to ride around and feel free in the mountains for the last few times.
5m19seconds it becomes more interesting. Time stamping doesn’t work on these pages
I went out for “maybe my last time” everyday until I just couldn’t afford the time anymore. I went to a special pretty little temple on a riverside road for my last good trip. I turned my accident evidence collecting helmet camera on to capture how nice it was, and I uploaded it to youtube, but it isn’t there anymore. It was more significant than getting divorced. It was a twisty, curvy, pretty, peaceful road that I could have ridden on for hours more, or maybe never stopped, but I had to stop. I couldn’t stay. I had to go.
a song for atmosphere
I disassembled my favorite bike and put it in a box. I was stuck at home now.
A Sri Lankan car mechanic from my Japanese class bought my car for $150 and took it away the week before. I said this:
“Got rid of my car, + got rid of my wife. …It was a good car.”
I felt a little sad when I happened to see the same small wine red car sitting at the edge of a automotive junkyard a few days later, but what can you do? The Sri Lankan guy did me a favor by taking it + giving me money. Most people are afraid of a car that old, and it costs money to dispose of them. I couldn’t keep it.
He said: “Hi Ryan san how are you , last month was very bussy so i coudnt log in online Im varry sorry for it. How is your life in USA.yor subaru car is good Iliki it very much , you never forgot me.” I haven’t.
I put things in boxes carefully for a few days when I could. I ate, slept, did my homework as quickly as I could, and packed up my house. Anything which I forgot to pack or couldn’t fit in the boxes I would never see again. It turns out that I left my cycling jacket behind, so I asked my ex-wife to send it to me in the US, but she won’t pay money to have the internet to receive messages, so I never hear from her, and I will probably never see either one ever again.
I woke up at 10am two days before my plane left and I packed the rest of everything away. I packed things up until 11:30am the following day – without stopping. I was rethinking the possibility of taking my cat’s scratching/ climbing thing to the US with us when the delivery truck arrived for the pickup. I confessed to the driver that my estimate of 15 boxes (everything I owned besides a cat tree really), actually came to 16 boxes. He stammered and hawed and informed me that he was only supposed to be taking 15 boxes. They never asked how big any of the boxes would be, or how much they would weigh, so I didn’t really see what difference it made, nor did he explain it to me. He just looked at the form and repeated that it was supposed to be 15 boxes. I was tired from working 25 hours straight, and I was sleepy, and I was glad he left. I was especially glad that he left with all 16 boxes, like I knew he would do eventually.
I wanted to sleep a little then, but working 25 hours straight burns calories like you wouldn’t believe. I ate a bit, but not a lot, because I was tired. Then I thought I ought to straighten up the apartment a bit and put the few things leftover into my suitcase for my trip home the next day. My ex-wife arrived at 1pm with a bunch of her stuff to move back in. My apartment was in her name (the reason why I couldn’t stay there). She offered to take me to the Indian place, for the final time. She was once funny, before I discovered that funny was mostly crazy pretending to be something it wasn’t. She wasn’t(and isn’t) always bad anyway. It’s a shame.
The guy at the Indian place whom I always talked to asked if this would be the last time I was able to come, and I said that it was for real this time, and I was sorry for that, and that I hadn’t slept for 27 hours, so I’m sorry if I’m talking funny. I didn’t drop off into my food like I expected to at least, and it was good! (I like Indian food.)
She dropped me off at home after, then ran out to make me a copy of the divorce papers (in case I ever needed to prove to someone who could understand written Japanese that I was once married, but now divorced). She came back and forth a few times to bring her stuff in. I cleaned and helped her carry things in. She asked me if I had plans that night several times, but I didn’t know. I didn’t know because they didn’t tell me, and because I had already been awake more than 30 hours. The monk had said that my new best friends would be throwing another farewell party for me the night before I left, but the details had not been forthcoming. When dinnertime came my now ex-wife suggested we go out for sushi, which would be another last opportunity. I was 34 hours awake at that point, so I suggested she bring me an energy trip on her next trip to my apartment; she’s a pharmacist + ought to know about that sort of thing. I drank lots of the free green tea they give you at sushi place, but I was falling asleep between bites then (I had forgotten about the energy drink). We stopped for doughnuts because they were on sale and I had points I had been saving on my club card since the time I first met her.
We wasted a little time together amiably. She asked several times if I was going to go to a party with my friends, but it was becoming less and less certain.
36 hours awake and the monk called me with the news. My other farewell party was impending. I had been hoping to see the woman who scared me (more and less) than my ex-wife, and him, and the belly dancers, and the big Brazilian guy who is friendly like Mr. Snufalumpagus, but my ex-wife was there with me then, and being friendly to me then, and she had a car to drive around and back home in, and I did not. At some point I would fall asleep, sooner if I was drinking, or eating, and most likely as soon as I sat down, which nobody wants. It was unfortunate, to say the least, but it wasn’t a tough decision. 36 hours awake and working most of that time plus alcohol and food = inevitable sleep. I told them that I was sorry. Sorrier than they knew because: Belly Dancers, etc. We didn’t go straight home though. I remembered that I ought to get something else for my cat for the plane, so we stopped at a store. I saw my old wine red car outside the store, and the nice Sri Lankan guy inside told me that he thought it was a very good car. I wasn’t sure if he was right about that, but I had always liked it well enough, and he was a mechanic – enough to know. I’m glad he is taking care of it and it wasn’t scrapped or anything awful like that anyway.
I fell asleep in her car on the way home, then tried to stay awake + help clean up the apartment she would now have to herself. It wasn’t filthy, but it was in severe disarray. Of course I didn’t make much more progress with my help; 37 hours and some odd minutes will probably + hopefully be the most tired I will ever be. The monk said he would stop by on his way home from the last goodbye party I couldn’t go to, but nobody heard him knock at the door.
I got up 2 and a half hours before my bus to the airport the next morning. My ex-wife was not there. She must have gone off to work quietly. I didn’t see her for most of that previous year, so it’s what I expected. I’m glad she was friendly before I left at least. I got dressed, fed my cat a little extra and put some of his food aside to take with us. I fed myself the little that was left in the fridge, while I checked the weight distribution of my 2 large bags. I put aside something vegan in a can to take for lunch, gathered together my computer, my insulin, and finally my cat.
I just had to do one more run through of the house to check on things, but then the monk knocked on the door. I love that guy, but he can talk, and he did. I forgot to pack my bike jacket, and the cat’s food. Poor poor kitty!
The monk told me how nice the party was, and I wish I had had a little bit of sleep or a lot more time to know those fine folk. He brought me a bottle of Shochu from where I used to live in Kagoshima. It was named deer king/ inferred as Satan. He laughed and gave me a good luck charm he had made as well. I needed that charm to make it to the bus on time, because I was distracted and he was talking. But he threw one of my bags on the back of his motorcycle and drove it to the train station, where the bus waited, while I dragged my suitcase, cat, computer bag + backpack there. I got there 2 minutes before the departure time.
Nobody gave me any grief about my cat coming with me. The guy at the bus depot told me I could take my cat, but only because I informed him that a friend of mine had brought a pair of cats on the bus. He said you aren’t supposed to, and he said it with an authority that was comforting. The woman I had asked several weeks before had only said the word no before she walked away nervously. I was glad I went back and found a more reasonable person to ask, and that he wasn’t completely wrong like she was. That same woman who only said the word “no” watched me ask him, and he said: “I was not to tell anyone that you can bring a cat on the bus to the airport, because you shouldn’t bring cats on busses, and they don’t want a lot of cats on their airport bus.” But if you’re bringing a cat to the airport, how else are you supposed to do it? After speaking to that woman the first time, I spent hours and days looking for other ways to get my cat to the airport. It became apparent over time that there was no other way to do it, short of having your ex-wife drive you to the airport, which she most certainly was not inclined to do.
Before even worrying about taking my cat on the bus to the airport, I spent weekscalling and e-mailing, trying to arrange to get my cat placed on the plane. United airlines said that they had a pet desk, but the international pet desk in Japan had been moved and nobody remembered where it was now. I asked at the regular United website, but they didn’t know, and both of their responses were self contradictory:
“What is the number/ address for the pet desk in Japan?”
“Your question could not be answered successfully. Your question is now marked as answered. Still having problems? Click here to ask another question.”
The 3rd time I tried that I got a message in which someone told me to call one of two United approved private handling companies and ask them to organize moving my cat from a counter in the airport to the back of the plane. I called and e-mailed those companies, and others (10 to 15 in total) and got a variety of estimates and offers ranging between $2,000 – $5,000 (for walking a cat about 400 yards down a hallway). About the 10th or 11th company I spoke with told me to just call United’s normal customer service line and ask them if I could bring my cat inside the plane. 5 minutes and $135 later it was all set up – easily! So I really didn’t need to have wasted a week and a half of otherwise important time writing and calling everywhere about what should have been, and ultimately was a simple thing.
I’d always wanted a cat. I loved mine. My ex-wife liked him at times, but she abused him at times too. I had to take him and I had to go through all of that fuss in order to take him.
On the bus to the airport I sent a few messages to people I knew from 10 years ago on and said that I was going for good most like. I told a friend of mine where to find the bike I’d had for the past 6 years, which was still in far better shape than his. I fell asleep a lot while trying to read a book for school.
The woman who organized the Japanese class I first went to, the one who came to 2 of our 3 wedding parties – and brought lavish gifts at each, she met me at the airport and we talked until it was time I had to start the long security screening – departure process. She also watched my 2 suitcases while I got my cat through customs. The customs officer was a pretty young girl who asked how long we (kitty and I) would be gone, and she insisted I take pamphlets and papers with her name on them, so we could get my cat back into Japan easier, when I did come back, if I did decide to come back.
“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
“The Road Not Taken”, or at least the last three lines of the poem, is arguably one of the most famous and well recognized pieces of poetry in the United States.
However, it is one of the most awesomely misinterpreted poems. A more straight forward and less sweepingly metaphorical analysis will show readers that the poem has strong ironic undertones and rather investigates the concept that often there is no wrong choice, only the chosen choice, only referencing non-conformity and the superiority of “the path less taken” sarcastically. Study of the poem’s background, title, content, and form will reveal that “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost is a lighthearted analysis of regret and rationalization of decisions.” http://voices.yahoo.com/the-road-not-taken-robert-frost-most-misinterpeted-3467513.html?cat=42
Now that you have an idea of how to practice direct observational drawing and have developed some technical skills, what do you want to draw? Discuss what subject matters are next for you. What projects will you complete in the weeks following the course? How will you keep warmed up?
Belly Dancers!
I’m going to draw some belly dancers, or maybe some other odd photos off the internet, or my best friend’s baby – like his wife has been asking me to do every time I’ve seen her for the past 8 years, but she’s not due to have her first for a few more weeks. Babies in pictures all look like angry pink raisins to me anyway. Belly dancers have really interesting poses and costumes at least.
There’s a large painting of a temple with some lanterns and a fish pond I never had time to finish before I moved. I painted landscapes in Japan for almost 11 years, and I wanted to have something to mark the end of that, but I wonder if a semester full of value pattern, edge control, atmospheric distortion, and other words I’ve learned will let me pick up where I left off, in the manner I left it, or if I want it to.
I liked what I did, for the most part, but who wants to do the same thing forever? After 11 years away, investing in a 12th doesn’t seem as valuable. Then as soon as I got a plane ticket and arranged to have my stuff sent back by sea freight (insure it if you ever do it), a woman I know threw a farewell party and she invited some of her Brazilian belly dancer friends. Nice people! You should see the photos! …because of the poses, the lighting, the costumes,
My house could do with a good vacuuming, but she took the vacuum.
All things considered, it’s a small price to pay.
I also became more aware of the time when there was abruptly more of it. It’s good and it’s bad, but it’s better than it is worse, so I’m not complaining; A few more hours in the day is something we all want.
I can get by fine only cooking twice during the week instead of 5 times. I don’t have to do a lot of extra cleaning up. (I can’t vacuum.) I don’t have to ignore the unsightly state of the toilet (she never cleaned up after her explosive daily discharges). I don’t have to listen to complaints not worth complaining about, nor problems which are hardly problematic. I don’t ask friendly questions that get gruff grunted replies, and nobody looks at me with evil eyes or shouts: “I don’t care!” when I want to say something.
I might still ask a question or two in passing when I go where she works to drop off her mail, but I don’t want to get into a conversation with her anymore:
It no longer matters.
I don’t like talking too much besides.
And she turns any exchange of words into accusations and complaints.
She called and woke me up one morning during that short vacation between school terms. I said:
“Hello.”
“Hello …………………………………………(extremely long pause!!!) ……….”
(Seriously! Don’t call someone early in the morning if you’ve got nothing to say!)
……………………..
“Did you need something?!”
“When are you going to pay me your rent?”
“I don’t know. What day is it?”
“It’s Friday.”
“Yeah, I know it’s Friday. What day of the month is it?”
“27”
(I don’t keep a calendar in my bed with me, but I know there aren’t any months that begin on the 27th day.)
“What day is the 1st?”
“Tuesday, but I want you to pay me today.”
“I want you to cook me dinner and vacuum my house, but it’s not likely to happen.”
“What?”
“We said I’d pay you on the 1st each month. Why are you calling today?”
“Oh, I need it to pay my rent.”
“You do have your own money you know.”
“But I want you to give me the money today.”
“I’m probably busy today (plum trees blooming), but I’ll see what I’m doing and write to you later.”
I got dressed, went to the Indian buffet for brunch, then painted the plum trees out in the park all day until it got too dark. Then I went home for dinner, + to get ready for my Japanese class.
She called again.
I said:
“Hello.”
“You disappointed me again.”
“What?!! What are you talking about?!”
“You told me you would come today.”
“I didn’t say that! I said I might come, and I would write to you later.”
“…And you didn’t!”
“Later hasn’t finished yet! Your mom said you usually work until 10 or 12, so I thought I would write or go there on my way home from Japanese “class.”
“Oh! I forgot about that! You still go to Japanese class?”
“I still go. I still don’t learn anything though.”
“Anyway, I won’t be here then. I’m done now.”
“I can call you after and bring it near where you live around 9:15 if you want. I don’t know where your house is though.”
“No. I have a plan tonight.”
“Whatever.”
“Please don’t disappoint me again.”
“Whatever.”
It rained all morning on Saturday then stopped late in the afternoon, so I decided to ride my bike around + do some shopping. I did stop in then + give her the rent money early after all. She made a big production out of it, as if I had given her a surprisingly nice Christmas present (except I always gave her nice Christmas presents, and that always made her angry). Then she harassed me about signing the divorce papers yet again.
Once I get divorced I’ll lose my house and my health insurance, and she’ll be able to go screw up some other poor bastard’s life. I don’t see any need to rush it.
Money, status, and snack foods are the only things she has any interest in. If she thinks you mean to cheat her out of these things, true or not, she gets really carried away – Screaming, punching, kicking, throwing the cat, and dumping a pot of boiling hot water on you carried away, …and that should not have even been the simplest of simple misunderstandings. Once she punched (and kicked) me a few times because a towel touched the floor. I hadn’t done anything wrong in this instance either, but just the errant thought that I might not pay her promptly – put her on edge.
I may have already told part of this tale but, one night a month before she left, she said it was cold. And it was cold.
I said: “Yeah, it’s always like this when I get home from work.”
Then she did that hateful sneering thing that used to look evil + hateful, but over time just came to look like a stupider variation of her normal face.
“SO WHAT!!!! ” she shouted at me between handfuls of peanuts.
“Why do you have to be such a bitch about everything all the time?!” I said.
“You’re always saying that you’re better than me because you don’t waste the gas in the heater!”
“What are you — ?!!” (crazy) “I never say that! I just said it now, just once! And I never said I’m better than you, I only said: it is usually cold when I get home from work, because: It isusually cold when I get home from work.
“Yeah, but you think that you’re better than me!”
“I think I don’t invent things – then get extremely violently angry over them, yes”
“You are such fucking bastard guy!”
Living with her always made me think of that scene in the 2nd Lord of the Rings movie when King Theoden has retreated deeper into the castle/ there is nowhere left to retreat to, and the orc army keeps coming. He looks as bewildered as me and says:
“What can man do against such reckless hate?”
I always used to say that to myself after those sorts of wild angry interactions.
“Holy Bitch-Tits!” too
(though that makes a lot less sense).
With all the extra free time I have now (with her gone), I “ride out” (on my bike) most evenings. Sometimes I take the racing bike out and around because it’s fast and it’s light, and you can dart around like a little bird on it. Sometimes I take the new mountain bike out because it’s fast, and it’s relatively light, and it’s fun to feel the rocks and the bumps as you pass over them. Sometimes I go shopping, sometimes scouting for good places to paint.
One night I went out to get some frozen food and was heading home with 30 odd pounds of it on my back. I tried to stop at a red light only to discover that my foot was totally stuck to the pedal. One of the 2 bolts had fallen off the shoe so that it would spin side to side (all the way around), but never work the cleat or the shoe loose. I could not get myself off of the bike, so I had to ride it into a big sporting goods store. The bike department was near the entrance, but it wasn’t being patrolled by the employees at that time, so I had to ride up and down another aisle to find a “push for service” button. The guy that came was the same one that put the tires on my racing bike a few months ago. He confessed he had never heard of my particular problem before. It’s a rare thing I’m sure! He found a pair of slippers for me to stand around in, while he tried to pry my empty shoe off of the pedal it was stuck to. It was no easy task, but a very complex – delicate procedure! He stabbed at it with 2 screwdrivers for about 40 minutes.
He did a better job of it than I could have. The frozen food I’d bought had softened somewhat, but for all that time – it cost me nothing. He even opened a package of the store’s best pedals to look for a replacement bolt for me …to no avail. I had to go to my usual bike shop to place an order for spare cleats to get a single bolt small enough, and that took 2 weeks to arrive.
It’s good I have 2 nice bikes!
For a few months time, I went out on odd evenings and made trips through 2 towns to a third one, to get to the Sri Lankan dinner buffet they have there. That was the last place my wife and I ever went together, but I certainly didn’t go for nostalgia’s sake:
· the food used to be good (second best I’d call it),
· it was the only night time Indian buffet
· it was cheaper than any other place (even comparing lunch to dinner prices).
· you’d get a fair bit of exercise riding a bike there and back
· I wanted to finish the conversation we started there.
The last time I went with my wife was the same night she was yelling because I mentioned that I never use the heater when I’m not staying in the room with the heater. I drove us there because:
I often used to worry that she would drive off and strand me somewhere (it’s happened before),
She drives recklessly when she’s angry (because she knows it scares me),
She often complained about paying for gas for her car, and her having to drive all the time (I offered her my old bike because you can cycle to her pharmacy in 5 minutes and never need to buy gas, but my old bike was too ugly for her.),
I ought to take a turn occasionally anyway I suppose. I used my car …almost monthly then– less than bimonthly now.
So we went, and she complained about my car being cold.
You can turn the heater on, but it will only blow cold air at you if you don’t let the engine warm up first. I told her that, but she didn’t care. She hates the cold, she hates my car for being cold, she hates me for having an old cold car. I, in turn, was irked, again, at how she types into her telephone while chewing through dinner, oblivious to me and all else. But the food was really good and we both ate a lot (because it was a buffet).
I felt a little guilty asking the guy for another piece of nan, when we were both pretty full already, so we agreed to split one between us instead.
I know what “splitting” means.
You know what “splitting” means.
The dictionary says it means this:
split (splt)
v.split, split·ting, splits
v.tr.
1. To divide from end to end or along the grain
4. To divide and share: split a dessert.
6. a port and resort in W Croatia on the Adriatic
She snatched it up and bit pieces off of every side of it.
“Hey!!” I said. “We’re supposed to split that! Aren’t you going to leave me some?”
She looked at me like I stole something from her, even though it was mostly the opposite thing that was happening. She threw it across the table at me.
She threw it as though she was paying a shoe shine who stained her white shoes pink, or a barber who balded a swath of her hair, or a prostitute who gave her a venereal disease,
…but replace the cash with oiled Indian bread, and someone who did something wrong for me, and that was the manner of contempt. She’s good with contempt. She exudes it.
I realize now that I probably won’t need to analyze and differentiate the ways that she turns totally mental on me in public any longer. That’s a good thing.
Anyway, after throwing food at me in public, she quietly stormed off to the bathroom and didn’t come out for near 40 minutes. She usually takes this laxative powder when she eats, which makes her go to the bathroom urgently and quickly (and very messily). She said she didn’t have it that night, so maybe pooping like an ordinary person took her a longer time. Or maybe she was on the phone again, or vomiting, or crying, or something in there. She eats enough for 3 or 4 people, doesn’t exercise, her teeth are stained brown, and she stays thin somehow, so my guess is that she was vomiting.
I tore out roughly half the portion of Nan that didn’t have spit on it, and got a little more curry from the buffet. The guy that worked there approached me cautiously and asked where I am from. He never met an American before, he told me. I said I never met anyone from Sri Lanka before, which is probably accurate. We talked for about 20 minutes by the cash register. It was interesting for me to have that chance to explore the extent of the Sri Lankan people’s problems in this country – not dissimilar from my own. My wife came out of the bathroom, saw the foreign people talking together, sneered, and went back to the table, typing in her phone while eating like a machine. The guys there asked if we were married. I said yes. The one made the Japanese horn sign behind the head for “demon” and asked me if she got angry. (I suppose Japanese women are known to get angry. (I have some experience with this.)) I looked over at the other side of the shop at my wife, who seemed to be eating angrier now.
“Holllllly Shiiiit!!!!!!” I said in quiet exasperation, and let my eyes grow wide. “You would not believe it!”!
I went back there by bike maybe 10 times after my wife left (because I love Indian food, and I didn’t need to cook copious amounts for her everyday anymore), but every time I went back it was all dark, and no one was ever there.
The first time I went back to find it closed was the most disappointing.
It was in February.
Nighttime comes early in February, and it’s chilly too …as you surely would have noticed.
I took my new mountain bike up the mountain to try it out on the dirt and rocks and to get a bit of exercise. When I got home for the night, I realized I had lost one of the warm winter cycling gloves I got myself for Christmas. I had only worn those gloves 2 or 3 times at that point. They aren’t even sold in Japan, and they’re expensive when you can find them in the US. My hands would sting with cold with or without the best cycling gloves. It’s just a question of how cold + how quickly. These gloves gave me roughly 15 minutes of declining comfort, compared to less than 5 in the ones I had been using, so I liked them. It was too dark and too late to do anything about it though.
All through the next day of school, I planned my strategy. I needed to make the best use of a limited quantity of daylight. I had been out all afternoon, and had stopped at a lot of places with my car the day before. I only had an hour and 15 minutes to retrace my path, and in order to find the glove, I needed to do it by bicycle. I rushed home, changed into bicycle clothes, and went out to look.
I started at the bike shop, because it’s the closest place to my house. I found the protective cover for my glasses there, which I hadn’t even realized I was missing, but my gloves were not there. Then I cycled to one store, then to another, then to the recycling center I had stopped at. I had already covered a middling distance at this point, and the sun was hanging low, but there was nothing left but to begin climbing up that mountain. I doubted whether it would still be light enough when I got there to be able to see a pair of black gloves on black asphalt.
Going uphill isn’t a lot of fun, but in winter it keeps you warm. Then you get to the top of a big big hill and you discover how much you sweat along the way. This is followed by the realization that it’s colder and windier at higher altitudes, and you have cold wet/ sweaty clothes pressed against you, making you very uncomfortable very quickly. Even in summertime, after a long perspiring climb up a mountain (where it is always cooler), you’ll want to go home as soon as possible. (The mountains exude a chill, the way my will be ex-wife exudes her chilly contempt.) Thankfully, my gloves were lying right where my trunk and driver’s side door had been when I parked, so I didn’t have to waste a lot of extra time looking!
I threw an extra jacket on top of the wet one I was wearing. When you go back down a long long slope, in the dark, in the winter, motionless, and wet from sweating up it, the wind gets cold fast, and colder soon thereafter. My hands would have been especially cold if I hadn’t found that glove. It was well past dark by the time I made it home. I had burned a lot of calories riding all around frantically. I thought about calories, and buffets, and saw that I didn’t have much on hand to cook a proper healthy dinner with – even if I did feel like starting to cook dinner then
…which I didn’t.
It struck me as an opportune evening to go eat as much Indian food as I could, provided I could stand a little more bike riding.
I stripped off my wet jacket and shirt, dried myself off a bit, put a T-shirt and the dry jacket back on, and rode through the 2 towns to the 3rd to get to the Sri Lankan buffet that was/ is out of business.
It doesn’t say anywhere that it’s out of business, there’s just a sign outside the door that says “We’re closed tonight”. The guy had said he was opening up another shop in another town, and I thought he just happened to be busy whatever nights I went, which is why I made all the effort to go back there all those other evenings. I even went around in the other town to look for the new place, but it wasn’t until I went on a Saturday afternoon to find it still “Closed Tonight” that I gave up entirely.
That 1st night was particularly unlucky for me though, because I was getting tired, it was late, I was cold and sweaty, and I still had to stop at a store to get something to cook before heading all the way home again to finally begin cooking. I didn’t get to eat until 11:30pm – much later than when I had previously thought it was already too late.
———————
That sort of thing always used to piss her off too. She was like a weird evil Mogwai with her 10pm food rule, and with her 3pm rule for swimming.
When we lived on the beach, there was little else to do but spend time outside by the water. If it was 2:15 I could encourage her to put a bathing suit on, if it was 2:30 she wouldn’t do it. I asked her why:
“Because it’s 3 o’clock.”
“Yeah. … …but it’s not 3 o’clock. It’s still: bright, sunny, + hot out. It won’t get dark ‘til 7, and there are lots of other people still out swimming around.”
“No.”
“?”
I was like the guy in Green Eggs and Ham trying to show her how the water didn’t turn to poison at exactly 3pm.
Would you swim at 3:15, if just to get your body clean?
“No”
If it was only 3:05, would you take a single dive?
“No!”
If you won’t swim at 3 o’clock, would you dip your feet in from the dock?
“I said No!”
Of course I wasn’t nearly that annoying, just persistent in suggesting it in summer.
That makes sense to me.
If you live on a hot beach in the summertime – enjoy it!
Jack hardly ever swam, but he explained it was because he was afraid of water, or …actually I forget if that was his reason, but he had a reason. She never explained it. Surely she had some reason, as well as a reason for only saying ‘No’. But ‘No’ cannot be the reason why she wouldn’t tell me the reason, or why she only said ‘No’.”
She’d sit on the beach in her jeans and pout or she’d go inside eat all the food (and probably pout some more).
Likewise, if dinner was coming late, she’d look upset, eat an entire box of cookies, and refuse anything more than a few small spoonfuls of real food. After 10pm was the only time she ever showed any restraint with eating. It wasn’t because the cookies made her full. Nothing ever made her full. She would often stop at a store for a snack on her way home from work (even though she only worked 10-15 minutes drive from our house). She started eating in the car, and ate continuously until 9:30 or 10. It was a daily one woman hotdog eating contest! But once 10pm chimed, she bitterly refused anything else – until she woke up early in the morning and cleaned out alllllllll the leftovers.
It’s good I need not worry about those eccentricities any longer,
or her bullish insistence on things that make no sense.
The night before she left, she insisted I take the ceiling light in the bedroom down for her. (Her mom gave it to us as a house warming gift, so she had a right to claim it.)
“Why don’t we do that tomorrow?” I said.
“Because I need it now!” she said
“You don’t need it now. You’re staying here tonight.”
<Angry look>
“Why do you need it now?”
“Because there’s no light in my new apartment, and I want to have it ready for when I move in tomorrow.”
“But you’re still not leaving until …tomorrow.” I said, but I could see she was starting to get angrier again. Neither logic nor contradiction agrees with her. It never did. I took it down.
“Oh no!” she said when it went dark in the room: “It’s going to be dark in here now.” (Naturally, it’s hard to pack your stuff up in the dark.)
I rolled my eyes with impunity; She couldn’t see me do it in the dark. I handed her the light, and went downstairs.
(It’s been dark in my bedroom ever since. I still don’t know how long I will stay here – probably not long, it’s probably not worth replacing.
If I want to change clothes after dark, I wind up wearing odd combinations of things. It’s okay. There’s no one around to see it.)
I watched her pack her stuff up for a few hours the next day, but got tired of it and went on a bike ride instead. She said she probably wouldn’t be there when I got back, and she wasn’t.
It’s a little sad, but I was mostly surprised at how it really wasn’t very sad. She was fun and cute once, but that was a long time ago, and probably just an act she grew tired of maintaining. I fell for it … I amvery gullible!
The next night I baked a cake: to celebrate, and because I would finally have the opportunity to eat a nice vegan cake as leisurely as something as fine as a nice vegan cake should be eaten.
I started baking the year we got married, because I saw that she was never going to. She always said that she liked to bake, and she took baking classes while we were dating, yet she never baked anything until I got started. I don’t hate baking things, but I stopped doing it after realizing that I get no satisfaction from it. Throwing a few cups of flour and sugar into the garbage can every once in awhile takes less time than baking a cake, and it would have resulted in the same amount of cake for me – which is no cake. There were times when she woke up early and ate entire pies for breakfast.
This time, with one whole cake for my own, I was surprised at how long it lasted. I had a little piece after dinner every night, and took a little bit to school to have after lunch several days besides, but it still lasted a full week and a half. It was starting to get hard towards the end. It’s a problem I could only have dreamed of having when my wife was around. I even thought I should go by where she works and drop a piece off for her for her birthday, but then I thought she’d probably be mad that I had baked a cake/ did anything fun the day after she departed, and it didn’t seem to be worth the trouble either way.
————–
I have fewer troubles, and I have worse ones.
—————
She took most of my daily hassles with her. She also took a lot of the special flavored tea I bought in America (the same tea she said I shouldn’t have bought). She really didn’t take much else. I guess being dangerously unbalanced and being totally heartless are different things (or, more likely, she just didn’t want to hire a moving truck and driver to take the fridge, couch, and kitchen table away from here).
She’s kept the internet running for me under her name though. She used to threaten to have it cut off when we lived together, “because she didn’t use it”. She did use it, just not very much. I had to pay her extra, in cash, each month to keep her from canceling it, but she still wasn’t terribly pleased with that arrangement. I don’t know why she leaves it running for me now, but I love having it.
I just have to ride my bike to where she works once a month and give her the money for that and the apartment. I also go in to drop off all the mail she hasn’t had forwarded to wherever she lives now, …and to get prescriptions filled.
Her co-workers only act a little weird. They don’t know what to say to me, and I understand that. (I wonder if they know what they’re dealing with; I sure as hell didn’t.)
They just smile and go about their business quietly. My wife comes out despondently. It surprises me how good she looks when she isn’t at home in the same pajamas she wore every single god-damn day for 3 long years. She looks slightly/ charmingly better than average! I wouldn’t go so far as to call her pretty or anything, she just doesn’t look all frumpy, disheveled, and mismatched, with thick glasses that shrink her head the way I always saw her.
She’s rude at first, then less rude, then she tries to cheat me by charging me full price when I know she’s run it through the computer at half price. I hold out the half of the money I am obliged to pay, wishing my time wasn’t being purposely wasted, until she or her coworker takes it. (I think they do have their suspicions about her.) Then she harasses me, cheerfully, about signing the divorce papers, not unlike the way she used to harass me, weepingly, to get married. She tries to push me to agree to sign the paper summer time or sooner. I eventually say “Maybe”, because it’s the only way to get her to shut up about it. I tell her very clearly each time she brings it up/ every time I see her, that I won’t sign the paper until November or December, but she enjoys the drama of trying to force me to do it sooner.
. They’re brief encounters, without flying objects or yelling, so it is bearable.
.
I don’t know what to tell people about all this. Luckily (?), no one ever thinks to ask.
I didn’t tell the Japanese teacher that my wife was leaving, because it was off topic.
I didn’t tell my doctor when he asked if I was experiencing any stress, because all the necessary follow up questions would reveal more about a woman (a pharmacist) he has to work with, than he would be comfortable knowing.
I did tell the librarian who sits next to me at school when she asked if I was married, but the old lady that does the tea and takes care of the gardens assured her that I am. I repeated that I was not, but she thinks she knows my business better than I do. I’ll leave you to ponder which of the 2 of us she chose to believe.
I also told a teacher at my school when he casually asked if I was married while pouring a drink for me at the beginning of the year party.
(I began the year at the bequest of my company. Although I have been working several months already, I don’t trust them enough to say for sure that I will be working here (for free or God knows?!) much longer. The other American guy has my same problem, worse than me, but not for long. That part comes later)
Life is a lot easier all of a sudden. It’s also a little more boring and a lot more complicated. I’m happier, but I can feel the problems gather around me. I worry about losing my house (which we rented through her company), my visa (spouse of a Japanese National), what to do with all the large furniture we bought last year.
I don’t want to have to hire a moving company to take away a brand new fridge, couch, and kitchen table either. …and where would they take them to?
I have no home, just another in a series of temporary residences.
But day to day, I’m happier.
For instance, I can have a cookie when I want to have a cookie. The boxes aren’t all empty in the cupboard.
One of the problems I find I have to correct now is my shopping habits. She used to eat enough to feed 4 or 5 and I still buy enough for 6, when I am now only 1. I found a place that sells loaves of French bread for $1 so I get a couple of them when I go, and I always have old bread now. It’s good I’m not fussy …or tired of bread.
I bought cookies 3 weeks ago, and I still have cookies. I would have even more cookies, but my cat learned how to work the zippers on my backpack and he tried to eat them. – He tried, but really he just chewed them up, and left crumbs all over the floor. The fact that I still have any cookies comforts me though. Cookie crumbs and shredded plastic all over my table and floor, and me with no vacuum is frustrating, but it’s avoidable and not ongoing. It’s not like I’m finding just a few crumbs in a cake pan an hour after I finish baking (as I’ve already said).
Without the bathroom scale, I don’t know if me or my cat are getting fatter or not, but I think we both are were. He runs away with the kitchen sponge if I don’t rinse it out after doing the dishes (food/ grease remnants). He swats food out of my mouth/ out of my hands/ off of my fork/ spoon, and he ate half a pair of chopsticks.
<One chopstick is, technically, equal to 1/2 a pair of chopsticks> but he chewed the food ends of both sticks halfway down to stubby handles after I used them to move a piece of fried tofu.
I thought the fried tofu was a good idea, because tofu is healthy and it’s easy to make, but perhaps I should avoid it. It is fried after all, and something I eat/ ate has made me heavier. The difference is not so great yet, but there is a definite danger of getting heavier still. I have to eat it warily besides, because the cat can strike from any angle at any moment, and he does.
I was eating potato chips while standing one day. He was pacing around my ankles meowing as if I would give him some …which I wouldn’t. “Hell No!” Suddenly, he had his claws in the skin on my chest and shoulder as he ran and leap up me. That hurt!
The fried tofu is only a little less problematic. I put him in another room and close the door, but all the doors are sliding doors, and my cat is smart. That procedure buys me 2 or 3 minutes at a time. I relax when it’s been all consumed but once, he came and sat his stubby little tail down in a bowl of soy sauce, then ran across the floor surprised and dripping little black puddles..
It’s warm enough now, that I can spend time outdoors comfortably. I have no one to play Frisbee or Nude Twister with, but I can cycle around at greater distances and lengths of time to try and lose weight. It’s working …slowly …sort of. My bike computer said I went through 740 calories after school one Tuesday, and I was aiming to get it up to 2,000 that Wednesday night, but a spoke on my rear wheel snapped while I was pushing past another guy on a lesser racing bike. There are only 8 spokes on each side of my racing bike’s wheels, and all of them are important to maintain the wheel’s circular shape. My wheel is currently shaped like a potato chip. I showed it to the guy at the bike shop hoping I could get it back that same day. First he gave me that worried look he gives when I have a major problem (but haven’t realized how major it is). Then he said he had to take the whole wheel apart to get the model, the serial number and the year of production before calling around to try and find a replacement for it. “If worse comes to worse, I’ll have to send off to Italy for another one.” He stood there looking at it, shaking his head gently side to side for a moment before loudly declaring his amazement at the many, varied, bicycle related problems I so often encounter. (This was 2 months’ shy of when the tow truck hit me, and long before the 2 weeks where I had the 3 flat tires!)
I wanted to say something to allude to the scope of all my other, non-bicycle related problems: losing my house, health insurance, wife, years of life, and all that. I’ll need to learn the Japanese phrase for:
“Oh Fuck man! You don’t know the half of it!”
———
End- 1 ———————
On Friday nights I go to a Japanese “class”. If I had better things to do on such an auspicious night of the week, I would do those better things,
but I usually just go to Japanese “class”.
The 1st time I went to Japanese “class”, there was a Chinese lady with flirty eyes.
The 2nd time I went to Japanese “class”, there was a Chinese lady with flirty eyes, and a see through blouse.
At some point the Chinese lady stopped showing up, but I kept going because it gave me good excuse to not cook dinner a 5th time every week, and because there were people there who weren’t purposely hostile towards the fact of my existence.
It was the Italian guy that told me to go. I met him a year ago, after our cycling team practice. He saw that I was another person who isn’t Japanese and recommended it to me. I don’t learn anything there, and I doubt he ever did either, but he meant well.
He also told me to wear a bike helmet – not long before a car nearly killed me because I didn’t. I had problems of some significance because of that.
Skip to 32:50.
48 weeks later I told the man at the insurance company that there wouldn’t have been an accident if I wasn’t a white man in spandex – causing such surprise in the driver. Bad things happen here. Weird things happen here. Thousands and thousands of harmless annoying things happen to each foreign person here.
The Italian guy was worried about the radiation, and left this country to get away from it, but it turned out not to matter. It was his heart that killed him.
I always assumed he was angry, but then I watched this year’s Giro d’Italia, and it turns out that that’s just the way that Italian people talk. He helped me anyway, and I appreciate that.
The bike team made a point to climb the pair of horrible mountains that he used to like to do with them, and I made a point to go along with them, but I don’t understand how anyone could enjoy climbing those 2 mountains.
Those guys I climbed the country’s 2nd tallest mountain with last year came back to force me to climb it again last week …so I was glad I had a knee injury to cite – in the way of: ‘Fuck that – doing it all all over again bull-shit, …Oh! I appear to be injured …aggrievously’.
I climbed Mt. Fuji 10 years ago with the guy on the right, + he had said we would do it again. I liked the idea of that: Mountain climbing bookends for all my time here, but the weekend he had off was the weekend that all the huts near the top were booked full, and I still don’t see why we need to pay so much to sleep cramped together in huts …but who cares. I plea incapacitation. It was a good excuse, and an honest one.
Getting back to it…
For the longest time, it was usually just 3 of us that went to Japanese “class”. One other American guy and I would sit and listen to an old Swedish man talk about how he:
Ate a nice hamburger for lunch,
did Judo back in the 70’s,
bribed people while conducting business internationally,
can’t read the worksheets without his glasses,
and the marvelous urine collection bags he saw people using in their cars in a traffic jam in Taiwan or Singapore.
I ought to remember which country it was, because he repeated that same anecdote several times (several times in one night even). What other people happened to be there in any given week rolled their eyes and looked at each other. The Italian guy said something loudly and bluntly to the effect of: “Goddamn it, you already told us that!” Then he would tell us things he had told us 2 times already.
I understand that reaction, and I have probably done this same thing, but I do like the man. He’s the only Swedish person I’ve ever met. He’s easygoing and kind. He looks just like Santa! His excuses for not doing his homework are logically unsound. If I were the “teacher” I would be offended by them, but they sound better in Japanese than my explanations of why I didn’t do my Japanese homework, so I can’t fault him for it.
Last winter he asked me to bring my wife over for tea. I remember thinking it would be beneficial for her to see just how bad other foreign people’s Japanese can be, and I remember her sneering at the invitation. It was back when the sneer was a lot more subtle. (She thinks I should be totally fluent after 10 years; He’s been here for 40 odd years, but he and I are at nearly the same level. Both of us should make more of an effort to actually do our homework I suppose.)
I tried to invite him out once when he was still around. I thought he’d have different/ better rambling stories to tell if he was drinking, but apparently he doesn’t drink. Apparently he’s too old to drive to class at night anymore too.
Shame.
I didn’t ask the guy from Congo, because he was embarrassed and hurried off after “class”. (Nobody told him that the answers to the questions were written at the bottom of the page.)
I didn’t ask the 2 young girls that came in only once, because I thought I’d have other opportunities to ask, and because I don’t need to settle for passable when there are prettier possibilities. I wish they’d come again sometime still.
I didn’t ask the angry guy from India, because he rushed away right after the only “class” he ever came to, and he seemed …a bit too angry.
I didn’t ask the cool guy from India, because I thought we had a cool guy understanding. I suppose he’s too cool to go back to “class” a second time.
I did ask the nice looking girl from Nepal, but it turns out she doesn’t drink, or do anything at all …or she’s just incredibly shy.
The even better looking girl from Nepal was even more inconveniently shy when I asked her, and her father (or was it her uncle) wanted to come along, but he was busy and I never saw either of them again anyway, which is an awful shame. She said she was a vegetarian, and she was pretty, and I swoon!
I made a special point to ask the Canadian lady, because it seemed to me like she was in particular need of a lot of booze.
I never had to ask the other American guy. He would subtly mime drinking motions after class whenever he wanted to go.
The other American guy doesn’t speak a great deal either. It’s good policy. Perhaps consequentially, he also doesn’t have a lot else to do on weekends. We started to go out drinking together on the odd rare occasion …then somewhat more frequently. The first time we went out was so I could relate the story of my wife throwing everything in the house at me. I think he enjoyed that. I liked looking at the waitresses. There was booze there too. He canceled one time because he thought I’d be too concerned or busy with my wife leaving. I thought she was going to try and steal the TV when she went, and I wanted to have something to connect the Play Station to, so I did want to be around to prevent that, but I certainly wouldn’t have called off a couple hours fun the week before she got the keys to her new apartment because of it. I always did anything so rarely with her that I always am ready to do something now – ready to do most things anyway. I even rode my bike to a Denny’s in a far off part of another town to watch people in some sort of “club” sit around talking boring crap.
Another other American guy there was trying to hit on a Japanese girl, by explaining what the small print on the backside of his credit card said. That’s what I mean when I say boring crap. Boringcrap!! His Japanese was crap, and her English was crap too. How on Earth did he get the notion that that was a good idea? It was painful for me to even sit beside them. My eyes were rolled so far up in my head that I got a mild headache. She was glassy eyed too, but she gave him her number after 40 minutes of it anyway. He moved back to his own country a week later, so I still don’t see it being worth the effort, but it demonstrates that trying (something stupid) can sometimes trump not bothering.
Maybe.
Perhaps?
I give up already.
Other people there saw that I was new, and leaned in to ask me how long I’ve lived in Japan, what Japanese things I liked, if I could use chopsticks…
all those perfectly reasonable things to ask a person who just happens to have been asked the same exact things day in
and day out
for 10 goddamn long years.
I expected that and that’s what I got.
But I allowed myself the hope of meeting a hot blooded girl with giant tits.
It didn’t work out of course…not really.
Jack, who is wise beyond his years, wrote to see how I was doing with my wife disappearing the way she did, and I told him how I was finally free to pursue my fleshy goals. With all the wisdom of a sage he advised me that with just a few outliers (and surgical exceptions): “the ones with a big rack are generally big everywhere else too!” That’s what I mean by “not really”.
I mean, I met up with a girl I met on the internet to see what meeting up with a girl you met on the internet would be like.
It wasn’t as weird as you’d think. In fact, it was just like any other time I try to get really drunk.
Then she invited me to go to this group/ club kind of thing. There was actually another intermediate stage when we went out drinking with her boyfriend and another guy, and her boyfriend didn’t mind that I was only joking when I suggested we draw a droopy penis on the side of a sleeping Japanese guy’s face, but that happened and that isn’t important. It’s just how I wound up invited to that place.
The place its self isn’t even important. (None of this is.) It’s just a Denny’s full of a bunch of people who aren’t fantastically sexy women underwear models. I suppose it might be a little fun to go occasionally, if you were really drunk or something, but there’s no booze at Denny’s, and the waitresses aren’t young or attractive like they are at the place that has the booze.
I went back again anyway + brought the other American guy. We met an old man that everyone called Colombo …even though he didn’t solve crimes or have a glass eye. You’d think he could manage one or the other, but no. There was a decent looking girl there then, who the other American Guy is now in love with.
I think she’s nice,
by which I mean she is not naughty –
which is why I have no interest in her.
I also prefer women who are curvier than I am. The girl from the internet was curvy the way that Jack warned me about (and cool besides), but she had a boyfriend so it didn’t matter. It’s good to get out a little more at least. (It’s better still when it isn’t with a bunch of old ladies at a Denny’s in a far off town).
That girl from the internet and her boyfriend have since moved up to the livable region of the radioactive earthquake zone, and they have to: wear a dust mask all the time, and shower and wash their clothes whenever they come home from work (to reduce the chances of developing various radioactive cancers). She went there to help the animals that were abandoned when people made their exodus out. He went there because she went there. It is admirable in each case, …and a lot less fun from the looks of things.
She said some useful things about salaries at our company, and told me that another girl that goes to that thing at that place is vegan like me. That’s certainly worth something! It’s worth even more than breast size if you’re practically minded!
I think I am more practical than most folk, but I had thought I was stuck living the rest of my life with no boobs besides the internet ever again. I told myself that they were functionless adornments, but I’ve developed a mad fascination for them all the same. I used to choose people for their personality, but it turns out: I suck at that. Pretending I don’t like what I like hasn’t helped me at all, so from now on it’s: “Boobs bigger than mine!” (and I don’t think I’m asking for a lot with that, …but I am surely in the wrong country.)
I’ll get the other American guy to go with me again sometime, so I won’t have to sit in a corner with the kind of older women you would never fantasize about and be asked about bored by boring me intentionally, with no chance of escape. He likes to go there better than I do anyway – Probably so he can see that girl that he is in love with.
I’m not in love with anyone, though I do, …vaguely, recall the sensation.
There’s a woman at my school with a nice curvy body, and an unfortunate face, who might be fun to spend time with were she not as un-fun as she, again, unfortunately is.
There is a new Chinese lady at my Japanese class who isn’t really new; She is old, older than the younger woman, who was older than me, who stopped wearing the see through shirt and started wearing a bra, before she stopped going. This new one, …who is old, looks good for her age though, whatever that age might be,
…She could be 60 for all I know. I sat down next to her once with the intention of asking her to come out drinking with the Nigerian guy, the other American guy, the woman that he likes, and I, but I didn’t. She seemed suddenly impractically old, even though she is uniquely good looking still.
Also, I am a coward.
It turns out that she’s married too. (It doesn’t mean much in my case.)
And I’ll say old once again here.
There is also the friend of the Canadian Lady. She’s funny because she isn’t, and I love her voice. I met her after the Canadian lady’s birthday party. During the Canadian lady’s birthday party I wondered who the girl dressed as a man, quietly – angrily drinking canned cocktails out of her backpack, while everyone else in the karaoke booth was singing was.
It was her.
She’s funny because she isn’t, because of the way she isn’t funny. She says she was in the military, and she acts like it, even though my father had always assured us that the Air Force wasn’t a real thing, just a bunch of sissies (…and women) that call each other by their first names and paint each other’s nails.
(If you have a problem with that sentiment you can reach my father at: somedildomachine@fancyladsareflying.com )
She talks like a line backer, but she looks pretty good.
Pretty (here) is a modifier to give more weight to the word good. It is not pretty as a lesser form of beautiful.
The difference in words is probably negligible to most people, but I think it might piss her off.
Therein the humor lies.
At her birthday party she ordered a glass of wine, explaining to me that it was cheap but decent, so I followed suit. They brought her a glass of wine, and they brought me a glass of wine, but her glass had heels and little pink hearts printed below the lip of it.
“Why did they bring me this?!” she exclaimed.
“Why didn’t they bring me one of those?” I lamented.
“They should have brought me a glass with little combat boots printed on it!” she said gruffly.
“Ilike the heels.” I said.
I was so enamored with her upper New York State manner of speaking, that I could not think to refuse her invitation for me to attend her birthday party.
Also:
I have fuck all to do with myself most of the time,
she was a woman (for the most part),
she looked quitegood,
and it wasn’t for another 2 month’s time,
so why would I refuse?
How could I refuse?
One weekend, we started drinking early. It was interesting, because we complained about our own countries for a change:
People are fat
People are really fat
People are rude and fat
People are fat like giant gobs of melting cheese on little peg legs and they’re rude
there’s that fuckin’ TSA too!
We’d all had a good 10 drink head start at the all you can drink place before she got off of work. She met us at karaoke after, but she still doesn’t sing, so she quietly, determinedly, worked through the canned cocktails in her bag again. She suggested I switch back to intoxicating drinks, but I was too busy singing and kept forgetting to oblige her, I think; I forget if I remembered.
My memory…
4 hours from the start of it, everyone else was tired and nobody took to the idea of going dancing except for her and me. She said she’d take me out, we’d look for a place to go dancing, + I could stay at her place.
I consider it one of the best suggestions ever made! …although nothing notable happened.
We walked everyone else back to the train station, but stopped at a convenience store for some canned drinks a block before we got there. I got a Mojito because I like the word Mojito, + there was a picture of a bat on the can. I was disappointed that there were no mint leaves floating around inside, like with a real Mojito, but I suppose someone more sober would have expected that. I told somebody my grand plan to put a giant cloth diaper on the statue of the famous samurai outside the station but they laughed as though I was joking – before they all left, but I don’t actually remember them leaving.
My memory…
She took me to a different convenience store and we got more cans of booze, which was a wonderful idea, because it’s 75% cheaper to get drunker that way, than doing it in a bar. She recommended one for me that said “double” in big capital letters, so I followed her advice rather than go by the art on the can. I had told her at her birthday party that I never get really drunk unless I keep a hard + fast pace. She might have remembered that. She might have thought I know my own limits, but I don’t.
We sat on a bench and chatted for a little while. (I have no sense of time but it was 60% of the volume of a large can’s worth of time.) At karaoke I had said how my mother in law had rearranged the whole kitchen, which made my wife mad at me when the placemats were in the wrong place. She asked me why I didn’t get divorced from my incomprehensibly dangerous wife now. I said I liked having a place to live for the time being. Then some Japanese girls walked by and she asked if I liked it when women dressed all skanky. I think I stopped myself from phrasing it as: “You bet your sweet blonde ass I do!” (But I surely do!) But she told me I couldn’t hit on any other girls that night, which was cute in that junior high school sentimental kind of way. …and I wouldn’t have anyway, because I don’t ever begin conversations.
Then we were in one of the bars from her birthday party, and there was a tall young ugly guy I never met who introduced himself as my Facebook friend. He was like a chubby red haired Napolian Dynamite, with foggy glasses. I didn’t know who the fuck he was, or why he was talking to us, but he was kind enough to explain that I asked to be his friend (on the computer) despite having never met him before, which was news to me, it being the opposite of the truth of it. It was an odd thing to walk over so determinedly, then mention so uncasually +so terribly off topic, but I didn’t bother to correct him, because it was just some freaky ugly guy who just came over in a bar, and I’d probably never see him again.
Then there was another guy, who I recognized from that place with the boring people, and we were shaking hands like old friends.
She said that he had tossed her down the week before, which was surprising because why the hell would you do that, and because we seemed to be good friends now. She said I should kick his ass, but that sounded much too …drastic, and I still had a can of booze in my pocket besides. I told him that: “She says I have to kick your ass so …you want to just arm wrestle or some shit?” Then he did want to arm wrestle!
I couldn’t sit down to arm wrestle with a partly full can of booze in my pant’s pocket, so I pulled it out. Then the bar tender yelled that ‘I couldn’t have that in there’, so I apologized and ordered a drink from him. I finished off the can of “the double” while he was mixing the other, paid the man, drank some of the new drink, gave the girl my drink, and sat down to arm wrestle. It’s safe to assume I lost, but I don’t actually remember anything else.
The next thing I do recall is her telling me we were leaving, and I thought we were going dancing at last, but that tall ugly guy came with us for some reason and there was no dancing, just walking around drunk looking for her bike. Then she pointed me to a couch looking piece of furniture. Then it was a little after 12pm the next day and I had to go home to get my insulin and eat. I told the closed doors in the apartment that I had to go home to get my insulin and eat, and I heard a woman’s voice call out “Alright”. I wanted to be sociable, so I informed it that it was supposed to be playing tennis with the people from earlier last night in an hour. ‘Perhaps the voice forgets things too.’
It said “4 o’clock”, which was a poor choice given that it started pissing down rain at 4:10, but neither it, nor I knew that at that point. I didn’t think to ask for directions, but wandering downhill where the buildings grew taller and taller got me to the train station.
———-
On the platform I bumped into a Vietnamese guy from my Japanese “class”. He said he had been out looking for a better place to live.
“That’s hard isn’t it?!!”
“Well they said they knew of a couple other companies I can pay to help convince them to rent to me.”
“That sounds expensive!”
“Yeah, it is. …What are you doing here?”
“I’m going home to take my medicine.”
“But why are you in town?”
“Oh, I went out drinking last night.”
“Last night? …What about your wife?”
“I haven’t seen you in awhile huh! I don’t know about her. I don’t know where she lives or anything.”
“She doesn’t live with you?”
“She used to, but, yeah, not anymore. …She’s a little crazy, and dangerous. I prefer it this way.”
He asked for my phone number while we were on the train. He seems nice and there’s no harm in sharing that with him. I looked at my phone then and realized someone I don’t know had called me at 2:14am, when I was out with the blonde girl, but I’ll never know who it was, or why they wanted to call me, or if they had good boobs.
I enjoy the mystery of it at least.
We had split off from the rest of the drinking/ karaoke group just before 12 and I only remember 30 – 40 minutes beyond that, but the unanswered questions are marvelous!
It’s too bad that the poor other American guy didn’t want to go to karaoke, and didn’t have enough money to go to the Canadian lady’s birthday party.
It was a long time ago, when my wife was still living in our apartment ignoring me, and before he quit his old job. He said he had to pay to get to a job interview in another region, but he couldn’t afford the train fare all the way back home. It was well before he didn’t like the new job we think I got him at my company. (I’ll get to that.)
It’s too bad he quit going to the Japanese class after everyone laughed at him too. It was funny when everyone was laughing at me, but I suppose he puts honest effort into learning Japanese, where I just allow myself to improve if I happen to improve.
The Pakistani lady explained that he was upset when he left, but nobody else realized it, because we were all laughing too much.
I wasn’t even laughing at him, I was still laughing at all the laughing + the pressure from when it was my turn to answer a question. He’s gone now anyway, gone from Japanese “class” at least. He’s still around and we think he has a job at my company.
He’s been working there for more than a month, as have I, so we probably do have jobs, …we just don’t have employment contracts, or any written proof of how much, or even if, the company will pay us for all the work they told each of us to do.
I live in Japan and this weird problematic crap happens to me all the time!
Him too!
All of us!
The other American guy told the Canadian Lady some things about my wife while our Japanese teacher was trying to get me to make a sentence in Japanese about her with words like: beautiful, stunning, lovely…
I don’t think she’s lovely. I think she’s a murky pool of rage. I got to see her without her makeup on everyday for 4 years, and I don’t think she even has a chin; Her face just becomes part of her neck somehow. She was stunning, in a sense, the first few times she threw my cat across the room just to spite me! It’s another topic…
I ignored the giggling prompts from the other American guy, and merely said that the sunsets in the bay where I used to live are stunning. The Japanese teacher, however, has long persisted in trying to get me to say romantic things about my wife, while I take care to not spread inaccuracies. “She seemed nice to me that one time she came here with you.” the teacher observed. The other American guy giggled and nodded sarcastically while taking notes. The Canadian Lady was reading something in his phone I had written pertaining to hot water flying. The Swedish guy was looking for the pencil he lost under his notebook. We all knew it was under his notebook. Why did it take him so long to look there?
I explained in my brusque Japanese that she presents herself differently from how she really is. The Japanese teacher said it shouldn’t be phrased the way that I said it.
You shouldn’t use the general terms to distinguish between the way something is, and the way something is presented as being; For a person, you have to use one of the specific words that mean: a person’s false persona/ their “outside face”/ their public face v.s. their real personality.
The North American caucus discussed this (and the Canadian lady’s troubles with her employers) at some length outside in the cold night after class. Is it a kind of Eskimo snow? Why all the specific – specialized terminology? Is the fakery so rampant? What can man do against such reckless hate?
American and Canadian lady were friends before I was around. They talk to each other outside after “class” when she does come, which is rarely, and he doesn’t come anymore. But I used to hear them make suppositions I have made myself:
The women are crazed and controlling
(though one might argue that all women are, Japanese girls are often worse). (Goddamn!)
2. People are superficially polite, but rarely show you any real kindness
My Australian friend told me he knows a guy who works at a school where everyone hates him. Displays of aggression are rare here, so I asked him how he knew they hated him. Then he told me my same cake story:
They pass out cakes, cookies, crackers and the like to everyone who works there. There’s a whole system to it, like there is a system to everything. They promenade around the teacher’s room delicately placing little napkins with a few pieces of candy, or bits of something on all the desks. It fun to watch them do this, because they do it gracefully until the moment they approach my desk and abruptly break off. You hear delicate little tip-toeing footsteps behind you, then they are suddenly at the desk on the other side of you passing out treats again. Sick, absent, on a diet, every desk – one and all, gets the little treats. – All except for him/ all except for me – Except it isn’t just him and it isn’t just me. I’ve worked at a great many places, and I’ve asked around as well; It is pervasive.
Why do they do that?
There are 45 desks here. They don’t sell food in packages of 44, so far as I know. It’s not such a big deal really is it? But it goes on and on and on and on, and it really does serve to show you how differently they regard you. I’m sure they don’t do it with that intention, but no matter how stubborn and thick skinned you might think you are, it will get to you eventually.
I think they have reservations/ inhibitions in dealing with unknown quantities.
Some people can not deal with a foreign person smoothly, or they don’t want to injure their pride by trying.
Others like to do it in brief regulated intervals.
And a few like foreign people too much – in the way that nerds like Star Wars movies.
Those people are often disappointed, because their foreign friends go home after having dealt too much with the other two types. – Then they meet me, and tell me about all the people that they’ve known in the course of their lives, which falls somewhere far short of fascinating.
Even when I had a wife, people were often asking me when I was going to go home. It’s a reasonable thing to want to know I suppose, but being asked that all the time, and being told about all the people who have left…
I don’t really even have a home anymore, but that makes me want to go.
Listening to the people sitting next to you talk about you as though you are just an abstract concept is also frustrating.
When a gigantic earthquake strikes, people look at you as they disappear, or they don’t look at you as they disappear. One woman shouted back through the door that I should get outside too. I still don’t know where all their helmets came from, or why they only had 44 helmets for 45 teachers.
(I didn’t need a helmet as it turns out, and I didn’t lose any sleep over it, but it’s small consolation.)
I get transferred and move on my own volition so much, that I don’t go out of my way in trying to make a lot of friends at work, but the Canadian lady does. She says she had made friends at the places she worked, but none of her “friends” would ever talk to her again after she was transferred, even though she’s still in the same town. They’re busy I suppose, and a person has to have priorities, but it does make you feel exactly like an old odd sock.
3. No one ever takes responsibility for the consequences of their actions.
No one is expected to.
The English books at school every year have sad stories from the war. They talk about how awful the war was for the Japanese people, and it truly was, but it’s entirely focused on the effects they felt and none that their country caused. They never make any mention of Nanking, Pleasure Wives, Pearl Harbor, etc. It’s a stinger without the scorpion, an inkless pen, a manipulative omission…
Those conniving, cheap, money grubbing, ass eating buffoons that caused the Fukushima meltdown still have jobs. They still have their lives! They said that they “regret any inconveniences” that their blight on the Earth has caused, but they never made any mention of how they kept several year’s worth of unsafe spent fuel rods packed too tightly in an unsecure environment just so they could save money. It was bad and it was seriously dangerous for it to be left in such a state before the disaster struck. Then, as you know, all hell went loose …and they put all their efforts into keeping their wanton disregard for safe procedures from becoming known to everyone. But we know about this company already, because they have had problems and leakages and bouts of lying in lieu of solutions before this big disaster. They wanted to abandon the plant this time leaving it and everyone to their eventual demise.
They never apologized for bribing the local governments to allow them to build plants in unsafe areas, or for continuing to operate that particular plant beyond its recommended term, or for failing to maintain it properly. They haven’t apologized for ruining people’s lives, livelihoods, or health, nor for making a large stretch of land “unlivable”.
They ignore the earnest questions that the former residents ask during press conferences. They don’t want to allow the U.N. in to inspect the site. They merely: “regret any inconvenience”.
During my 1st week in Kagoshima, that dumb old mule I worked for yelled at us and said that he kept losing customers because all of his teachers were bad. 9 teachers fired and quitting (from a staff of 2 and a half) in a span of one year makes me think, maybe the problem went a little further than that.
I know he had no discernible curriculum to teach the kids. The people that hired me after said he charged 4 times more than his competitors. But his failing business was due only to the bad luck that other people brought in to it (times 9)!
My soon to be ex –wife was not near so bad as Tepco or as ugly as him, but she was just as thick headed.
She didn’t want to have to bother to unplug the internet from my computer and switch the wire to her own. She’d just use mine on her days off instead – which is fine, but Three times I came home on a Thursday to find that my magnetic art mouse wasn’t working properly.
“What is wrong with this?” I’d say.
“I don’t know.” She’d say.
Then I would lift the mouse pad/ base off the table to see wetness dripping from it, and a puddle underneath.
“Why is it wet here?!” I’d say.
“Kitty did it.” She’d say
“What did the cat do?!”
“That.”
“Why is it brown then?”
“It’s tea.”
So my cat displays remarkable prowess in making himself cups of tea – but only when she is around and I am not.
(As remarkable as that sounds, he lacks the coordination to drink the tea without spilling it across the table.)
Accidents happen. I understand that better than most, but I do try to avoid making the same mistake the sameway somany times.
The second time that same thing happened I was still very civil and understanding if, understandably, rather more upset. The 3rd time it happened I remained very civil, but my patience was thin and my art mouse thing never worked again!
I told her that I expected her to pay for it. She refused.
“It’s your cat, so it’s your own fault” she told me.
“It was your3 cups of tea you left next to my computer. I would have thought you would have learned something after it happened thefirst time! It is yourfault!” I exclaimed.
“No.” she said.
Then she got mad when I borrowed her mouse.
And she got mad again when I bought a normal/ cheap replacement mouse for $10.
She never replaced it. She never paid me. She never apologized. She never admitted that she had any part it its demise.
On the contrary, she took offense to me removing her large lidless thermos full of cold tea from besides my computer whenever she left it there unattended.
“I can’t even have tea anymore.” She decried.
“You can have all the tea you want. You just can’t leave it sitting full- next to my computer for hours at a time- waiting for it to spill again!”
“You are such bastard guy!” she’d say and sulk.
WTF?!!
A month ago she came by for the 1st time ever to tell me that her mom doesn’t want us to get divorced. It sounds like something her mother would say, but I am beyond caring what her mother wants. I told her that and she looked sad. She won’t say it’s really what she wants, because she’s too proud/ stubborn to admit she was wrong. She always has been. She would rather get divorced and move back in with her mom than apologize to me, which is fine. I’ve enjoyed this time that she’s been gone too much to go back under the joyless yoke. (and it’s not like I’ve been throwing co-ed underpants parties in the meantime; I’ve been riding my bike, cooking vegan soup, and not getting scorned for it.)
She typically blamed: me, the cat, her company, and her mom (in that order of frequency) for all kind of problems that we were each incapable of causing. I always thought it was funny until I came to realize that it would have no end.
She was also frequently mad at me because of the way that I apologized for things. She didn’t want to drive in the snow once, so I did it. We went snowboarding and we had to get home again. For the 1st mile I thought the car was going so slowly because of the snow, but the parking brake was on. “Oh No!! Sorry about that! I never use the parking brake, so I didn’t think of it.” I said. She was mad, and she had a right to be, but she insisted for years that I had refused to apologize; I don’t understand that, because I did apologize, many times – three times that day, then every time she brought it up again, which was frequently. I think she was actually upset because I didn’t squirm and squall and resist before apologizing, but there are only so many ways a person can say “I’m sorry” without stretching into theatrical insincerity.
She would never even say that much! She ruined some of my new painting canvases by stacking books and boxes of paint on them while she was angrily removing all of my stuff from one of the rooms upstairs. I told her that she should replace them for me.
“Why? They’re your canvases, it’s not my problem!”
You can maybe understand how I was able to mourn her departure with a cake.
The Canadian lady seems to have done much better with regard to her spouse. The Canadian lady is married to a Canadian guy who does Kung-Fu + Ballet, and wears an honest to goodness kilt with a big golden octopus pin on it. They own a respectable car, and they seem to have figured out how to have it insured. That’s why she doesn’t go to Japanese “class” often! They’re probably off doing worthwhile things, like married people (who aren’t me) do.
I mentioned already that I made a point to go to Japanese “class”, so I could take a break from cooking for my wife, who frequently skipped out on her turns to cook, to eat with her “friends”, leaving me home alone for hours waiting, before slowly realizing that she had done it again. She never suddenly had unannounced plans with her “friends” when it was one of my more numerous turns to cook.
People here tend to think that being married to a Japanese person will help you to speak Japanese well. The Nigerian guy told me this is true, but it wasn’t in my case.
Before I was married, I would go out and do things with Japanese people, and speak Japanese with them. After I got married, my wife made fun of my Japanese, spoke for me when I didn’t need her to, and only grudgingly helped me when I did need help. I didn’t often speak Japanese with her because she would work a thousand insults into every simple sentence, and they weren’t clever insults. She always sounded remarkably low class doing it.
Years ago, when I moved back to Saitama, she was made to be my volunteer Japanese teacher. After a few months time, I volunteered to stop going to be “taught” by her. Nagging someone in a different language one day a week is not educating them, … if only I was of sharper mind, I might have learned more important things from that situation.
The Canadian lady has a similar excuse to not speak Japanese well. She’s spent much of her free time with another Canadian, so most of her interactions throughout most of her time here have not been in Japanese. He can probably do most of her talking for her too. Probably. I don’t know that for a fact, but he can do Kung-Fu and Ballet and wear a kilt in frosty weather; Speaking a foreign tongue is just one more thing.
She doesn’t speak Japanese often, and speaks it so slowly when she does speak it, you’d wonder why she doesn’t make more of an effort to go to “class” for the times when she does need to speak. Then you remember that the Italian guy had been going for 10 or 15 years and he sounded worse than anybody. When he left, “class” was just time spent listening to an old Swedish man who looked like Santa talking about, judo, bribery, and urine collection bags for 2 hours every Friday, and you wondered whyyou still went; You never even get to see the hazy roundness of that 1st Chinese lady’s boobs through her shirt anymore.
The other American guy speaks very well when he does speak, which is rarely, and then mostly just to make jokes. Again, I think that’s good policy. He’s smart and seems to study in his free time too. I think being single gives a person more incentive to make an earnest effort, though I don’t see a lot of extra studying in my immediate future. What’s the point of it? I don’t like talking about my chopstick abilities all the time.
– It’s 2 sticks in your hand, it isn’t rocket science.
I, otherwise, don’t have much interest in small talk, and most of the Japanese people who don’t have stupidly insulting things to ask – generally prefer to ignore, or avoid me.
I do approach people from time to time …not often, but on the odd occasion where there is something worthwhile to say.
20-30% of the time it is easy.
30-40% of the time you’ve made them nervous because you are different and they will inform you of this, …sometimes at great length.
It is uncomfortable for all involved, but it is even more obviously irrelevant. I.E: “Facinating though that is, I’m only looking for a bathroom.”
Other times, you put in the effort to say something to someone and it is sheer condescension.
There’s a bit of overlap between those reactions too.
“What kind of dog is that?” – I say in Japanese to a Japanese man walking a dog
“I don’t know.” he growled in Japanese, and walked the dog away, looking suspiciously over his shoulder 4 or 5 times.
“It’s your dog, how the hell could you not know?” I think to myself.
————–
“I’d like to have a prescription filled.” I said in Japanese to the hospital staff.
“Ah! I don’t understand English!”
“?! Well, …it’s good that neither of us is speaking English!
“…”
…so… I need to have a prescription filled.”
“Can’t help you There are no Doctors today.”
————–
“When do you close? + How much to get in?”
“Where are you from?”
“From America. …When do you close? How much?”
“What part of America?”
“Near New York. …How much?”
“How long stay Japan?”
I rub my fingers together as though I am fanning out bills of money. There is a limit to how many times I care to repeat myself.
“It’s expensive.”
“…” (Thank you for wasting my time.)
—————
I must have still been groggy and slow of wit when I answered the knock on the door that morning. You never meet anyone you want at your own door, certainly not in the morning. On this occasion, it was a man with a receipt that said that I paid him 5,700 yen, except I hadn’t paid him 5,700 yen. He expected me to pay it then.
“What for?”
“Neighborhood association” (They don’t suck like the American ones, but they’re never good.)
“I quit that.”
“Well you still have to pay.”
“Why would I have to pay? I quit it.”
“But we like to have everyone be a member.”
“….(a shrug to indicate I didn’t give a shit)…”
<long pause> “We really do hope to have everyone join.”
“….(another shrug to indicate I still didn’t give a shit)…”
<longer pause, accentuated by several false starts> “… , …, …You throw garbage away don’t you?”
“Well, yeah. Not much! …but yeah.”
“Then you must pay 5,700 yen.”
So I paid him and felt like a sucker! After he left, I remembered how they had 1st enticed us to join the neighborhood association by saying that the money we paid was for the big party. ‘I like parties! Let’s join!’ We might have even gone to the big party if they didn’t hold it before lunchtime on January 1st, but we didn’t go, won’t be going, and that money was to cover 2 people, for a party – not for garbage disposal.
Also, you can’t throw garbage away unless you buy special marked bags from the city. I bought the special bags, so I already paid the city. I only threw away 4 or 5 bags of garbage last year besides (because we recycled or composted everything we could). I thought about that, and further considered that I probably can’t stay where I live for much longer anyway, so a full year’s membership for 2 people who throw a lot of stuff away, and don’t go to the party, is not something I find myself in need of. I would much prefer to go to the Indian buffet 6.477272727 times (repeating).
The only thing of any apparent value to come from this money, is a clipboard of information that gets passed around every 2 weeks. It’s always about garbage disposal methods (and stretching classes for old people), so I don’t need it/ can’t hardly read it anyway.
I waited ‘til suppertime, then found that guy’s house. I liked the look on his face when he saw me at his door with a receipt for 5,700 yen. It doesn’t even matter what you say in a situation like that, it’s all awkward. He wanted to get rid of me, so it was quick and worth the 5,700 yen refund.
The woman from my company was similarly uncomfortable when I refused to sign the contract she brought me.
I thought that would be the last either of them would want to see of me, but when I got home from the doctors’ the next day that same man was standing outside my door waiting for me. He had a new receipt for Y5,700. I showed him my empty garbage can, but still had to give him money for reasons I am still unclear of. He said he would only charge me for the important things, whatever they were, so I did get some change back at least.
The woman appeared at my school unannounced the day after that one important guy at my company had lied and pleaded on the phone with me. She told me that that same guy, another guy I am supposed to know, and the president of my company would all be making the 2 hour $160 round trip by car to come and talk to me. I don’t want to waste another year of my life here waiting. I want the same salary I made 6 years ago at the very least. I told them that long before she brought me the same crappy contract they’d brought me twice already. She confessed that she did not like the way my company is run either.
I’m not intentionally rude or anything. I am, however, getting tired of being dicked around with. I acquiesce in most things most of the time, but I don’t feel I need to give another year of my life to a lot of cheap sleazy bastards who profit through lies and manipulation. It used to be that it was better to stay put here than go home to be unemployed for however long it takes someone with few skills to find a job, but if I ever want to have a better job, I will have to go home to look for it. It isn’t here!
Here there is little opportunity for anyone born with different genomes.
You may as well be a talking hippopotamus.
I used to think that the Brazilian woman at the Japanese “Class” had it good. The government has some sort of program to help people of mixed or full Japanese ancestry move back to Japan and find work. That ticked me off a little when I found out about it. She and her parents grew up in Brazil, had only Brazilian friends, all their experiences have been entirely Brazilian. And in the meantime there’s a Brazilian boy at my school who’s spent his entire life in Japan. All his friends, all his experiences, his whole identity is entirely – mostly Japanese, except he’ll never get that kind of aid from the government. Even so, it wasn’t enough for them. She and her parents got fed up with it here and went back to Brazil. I don’t like it when people cross to the other side of the street, or run indoors and peer out the window when they see me come by, so I think when the Brazilian boy at my school is old enough, he’ll leave here too.
I suppose in some ways it was worse for the Brazilian lady’s family. They had dark hair and Japanese last names, but they didn’t know the language, and they didn’t know the customs, and that probably weirded people out all the worse. If we all had blonde hair or big noses, the rest of the people would know who to snub and shy away from.
I wish it were easier for them here, but it’s also comforting to know that I am not the only person who has these problems.
My sorrows, …they are significant, but a little gin can help a lot.
The Canadian lady would need a 40 proof pond. The Japanese teacher asks her how she is, and the Canadian lady sighs.
It isn’t that overly dramatic exaggerated sigh my wife used when I asked her to please eat her regular ice-cream, and not the last container of the only vegan ice-cream I was ever able to find for myself.
The Canadian lady looks off in the distance and forgets where she is, as all the accumulated sadness courses through her. After hearing her complain for long periods over several occasions, and never coming near to concluding her accounts of the way she’s treated in this country, it is just the sound you discover you were trying to place to all that trampled down dejection.
and you laugh at her.
“How are you?”
“Sigh!!! ….. ….. …..”
“Well let’s…”
“I. … …I’m trying so hard!! ….. …I really am!”
and you laugh again
You laugh because it’s true, because she is, plainly, trying. “…I’m trying so hard!” is such an honest awkward response – heavy with an expectation of some simple kindness, in a land where people give every outward appearance of being kind. Were we not in Asia, she would even have a chance of succeeding/ or at least not getting screwed over at every opportunity.
——-
“You there. Do you understand any Japanese?”
“Yes. Some.”
“Ha! Did you hear that?! It sounded like he answered me.”
“I have been here for 5 years. …I do know what you’re saying.”
“Ha! He says he can understand us. Maybe he does. Ha, Ha! I don’t like the look of the other one anyway. Etc. etc. We’ll think it over.”
Outside in their hallway:
“Those guys were a bunch of assholes weren’t they?”
“Grrrr!” <fuming angry other candidate>
“And this town sucks something awful too!”
“Seriously! I want to live in Nagano but if they pick me, I’ll just refuse…”
“Good news! They decided already!”
Oh Christ! I hope you got it!”
“Ahh! No Man! I hope it’s you!”
“Ryan, you got the job! You start in 4 days.”
“What?!….but, …I don’t want to work here for these people.”
“…if you want a job, you’ll have to work here.”
“…Sorry man!”
“…Shit.”
—————-
When I met the Nigerian guy years and years later, we found out that he was obligated to accept a job in that town once too. We get bounced around as our respective companies undercut each other, and we quit jobs at companies when we get sick of the way they boost our hours and steal our pay back from us. I was there before him and gave it 4 months before I left for more money and far less work. He said he quit that place after 3 weeks. He and I have been able to survive in some measure of comfort because of our looks. Some towns and smaller companies will refuse black people outright, but he’s healthy, handsome, young, and expressive enough to appeal, as am I (though I am, admittedly, less black).
For the purposes of the business here, we are not people. We are products you can pay to borrow. The younger and better looking we happen to be, the more our companies can rely on repeat business. We don’t know the laws for the first 10 years we stay here, so they can cheat us and kick us to the curb with the greatest of ease.
The Canadian lady, gets this treatment a lot.
She filled a temporary vacancy for a company that promised to find her a full time job in return for her service. She worked hard, but they gave that full time job to a younger woman with no experience instead. She complains about stuff like that …with good reason.
One time we had an entire class where the Swedish guy just sat eating candy, and the other American guy and I just sat listening as the Japanese teacher tried to make helpful suggestions on finding a good job.
But she can’t. At least, she’s not likely to,
not here – (not in my admittedly pessimistic opinion anyway).
The problem is multi-fold:
She is not young.
She is not vivacious or slender.
She wants a fare wage for her efforts
and she wants the treatment and benefits that we are guaranteed, the same ones that the Japanese peopleget as a matter of course.
But she, and he, and I, are not Japanese people. We are something else, something not entirely unwanted, only mostly unwanted (most of the time).
– We are useful, like a new computer you don’t want to take the time to learn to use.
– We are troublesome, like a tank of fish that you have to tip a bit of food into occasionally.
– We are tobacco stains on your teeth and a stink in your clothes when you thought smoking would make you look cool.
Things are getting better, slowly, kind of. For instance, most of the new signs they put up these days are bilingual. That’ll help the tourists and people who have just arrived to get around easier.
One nice new policy “change” is that the police aren’t supposed to stop foreign people they see in the street and demand to see their passport/ Green-Card without a reason anymore. They can stop you, and you had better show them if they do stop you, but they never wanted to stop you (and suffer potential embarrassment) before it was officially discouraged …so the effects will be very minor.
The new website they made for reporting crimes committed by foreign people is probably related to this “change”. The police department checks the site for useful anonymous facts, such as “they:
Stole my television and raped my wife”
Looked at me”
Looked suspicious”
Made me feel uncomfortable”
etc.
(All those responses are genuine except the 1st one.)
Maybe a crime is, somehow, worse when it’s committed by a foreign person, but I still don’t see the need to have a special page to report it on.
They say that over time, people (- people like me) can become overly sensitive to these kinds of things, or become more reclusive. Additionally, a lot of us become alcoholics.
I’m all three.
With the holiday weekend approaching (and my bike still waiting for a single spoke from Italy to make it usable again), I suggested we have our Japanese “class” at that cheap bar I like (with the sexy waitresses). I was only half kidding, but they took to the idea of doing something different and festive – a Japanese “class” party.
I made peanut butter cookies for the occasion. There was plenty of peanut butter, but I ran out of brown sugar, so I went out to get more, realized my other bike’s shifter had broken when I slipped over in the rain, went to get it looked at (It took me like 5 hours to make those cookies is what I mean).
I ate 2 of the cookies when I finished, and the acne I’d had in high school came back.
Everyone made a point to say how they liked them. I like them too, and I need to work my way through the rest of the 6 pounds of peanut butter I’m keeping in my kitchen, but I’d rather lose my winter belly fat than the peanut butter and time it takes.
It’s good we did that “party” then and not now because, suddenly, that “class” is full to packed with 50 year old housewives of varying nationalities. There is a Chinese lady named: “Cho”, and a Korean lady named: “Chong”, and all the seats get filled with various happy older women I collectively refer to as: “Chatty”.
Last month the Vietnamese guy, a new Sri Lankan guy, and I sat glancing at each other in long contemplative silence as 12 old women all talked, and giggled, and carried on in their high loud voices for 40 minutes solid. The Swedish guy would have appreciated the noise and company, if he were still able to come.
I met his wife at that party. I liked her because she was calm and relaxed, not anxious and tittering like most Japanese women you meet. I hadn’t seen anyone wearing sweatbands (non-ironically) since I was 8 years old either.
There’s a woman from Myanmar who goes to Japanese “class” now too. I like her because she is not anxious or tittering, because she is refreshingly confrontational, and because she looks just like one of Marge Simpson’s sisters …well not just like; Her skin isn’t yellow, her hair isn’t blue, and she has more than 3 fingers. If they had the Simpson’s characters speaking Japanese slowly, she would sound just like her though. Grumble.
She cooked a traditional food from her country which I wouldn’t eat because it was all little shrimp mixed with a red colored rice.
“Why don’t you want any?” she demanded to know
“I never eat anything with any meat, fish, milk, egg, etc.” I said.
“What?! You’ll get sick and die! You don’t want to die do you?!” she demanded again.
“”I haven’t eaten any meat, fish, milk, egg, etc. for years.” I said “I’m doing well so far
…but thank-you!” I said
She frowned and made that grumbling sound that Marge’s sisters always make.
The Chinese lady who is old (but how old could she be really?), didn’t know what to make, so she bought some Japanese jello, which turned out to be vegan, or they turned out to be lying to me. I ate some of the asparagus the “teacher” brought from her garden too, but I didn’t need much else really, because the Canadian lady and her husband had had me over for a mostly vegan barbeque at their house a few hours before.
The Swedish guy’s wife took the last 5 or 6 of my cookies home with her and said she wouldn’t share them with him. He said he planned to study Japanese extra hard from now on. He’s been here for 40 years already, so I wondered why he hasn’t given up already like: the 1st Chinese lady, the 2 Chinese students, the Brazilian lady, the embarrassed guy from Congo, the young girls that could have been prettier, the Canadian lady, the Nepali girl, the really pretty Nepali girl, the cool Indian guy, the angry Indian guy, the guy from Morocco, the other American guy, the Italian guy, and I? have.
He said:
“I am the only one who speaks Swedish. …If I don’t speak Japanese, who can I talk to?”
——————————————————————-
End part 2
——————————————————————-
I work at a school. No.
I think I work for a school.
I go to a school and I do work there, but they pay me in lettuce for all I know.
I mean that.
There’s a head of lettuce sitting on my desk, one of the many that the retired principle dropped off for us. My first pay-check (from 2 months ago) ought to be coming to me soon, if they do pay me. If they don’t, I’ll at least have had a head of lettuce for my troubles. The old principle stops by with vegetables on occasion at the peaks of different growing seasons. When the school year started and there was a fresh crop of new students, he came in a suit and made a speech, which I slept through. I’m sure it was one of the better speeches that I slept through, because I didn’t seem to have been asleep for very long.
As far as all the other speeches went, all that I know is that every 20 or 30 minutes there would be waves of subdued applause. I would wake up startled, clap a few times, then fall promptly back to sleep again. After that little bit of purgatory finally ended, I met him outside and asked him how he’s been. He looks good and likes being retired. I think he prefers farming to …whatever it is that Japanese principles do. With 11 years gone and all the troubles I have to look forward to now, I think it may be time that I retire too.
I may never know what will happen to Mr. Kobayashi. He’s been on Death’s speed dial for well over a year. Sometimes it seems like he’s totally spent, but he hasn’t actually died. He did get hit by a car last year – a few weeks after I was hit by a car, but all that did was make his bones ache more and put him in a neck brace for a month. He looked and sounded his worst then, like he should have had nurses attending him and an IV to drag around with his broken arm. (I said that jokingly before I realized that he actually keeps a giant tank of oxygen and a nose tube under his desk.)
We both left for summer break like relatively normal people, and both came back from summer break with casts and bandages on our same forearms. I went up to him and pointed at his hurt arm with my hurt arm and laughed, and he tried to laugh, but just started up with a coughing fit instead.
I don’t understand why he had his cast, because his crash wasn’t ‘til 2 weeks after that. Even more mysteriously, the cast went away before Christmas, and came back for March and part of April. His hacking cough, his wheezing, his slow laborious shuffle from place to place, his ever present shivering, sighing, unfocused gazes, shaky head and hands, his quiet raspy voice, they never seem to improve, not all of them, not all at once. He always sits at his desk, sighs and sleeps, or sits on a folding chair outside like a sack of potatoes that is spilling over. He watches his gym classes run laps, but he doesn’t watch them run laps, because his head never turns to follow their movements. He just looks up at the sky.
I wonder…
The new principle isn’t new anymore, but he’s almost as afraid of me now as he was when he started a year and a half ago.
People that were here my 1st year are better in that respect, but there’s still no need for them to talk to me most of the time, …and they don’t.
There used to be 2 art teachers, but now there is only one. There used to be one home economics teacher, but now there are two. There has always been only one music teacher, and he’s still the only one who ever talks to me just for the sake of it.
The librarian I used to share a desk and computer with, was quietly replaced with a different librarian – who gets her own desk. I have to reach across her desk to use her computer to write this, which is a little awkward physically, and even more awkward when she comes back from the library to find me recumbent, …catlike, across 30% of her space
(I could write this at home on my own time too but …fuck that.)
Now I share the other half of “my desk” with the school psychologist, but he’s only here on Fridays. He speaks English very well for some reason. He wants to talk with me for some reason. He is gentle, friendly, and old enough to continuously forget that talking to me is awkward.
“Hello.”
“Hi.”
“Can I ask what is your name?”
“Ryan. You?”
“(I forget what his name is now.) How long stay Japan?”
“10 years”
“10 years? Wow! So long!”
“I know it!! …Where else do they have you working?”
“Excuse me?”
“Well, you only come here on Fridays…”
“Yes. That’s right.”
“So where do you work the other days.”
“Oh. I work at <name of school>.”
“You work there for 4 days and here just one?”
“No, I work there one day, and I have a half day at the elementary school too.” He looks around furtively and confesses that it isn’t enough work.
“Yeah, they are cheap here. I come every day, but they don’t pay me anything either. I don’t even get health insurance.”
“What?”
“Foreign people never get health insurance.”
“That’s too bad.”
“I know it.”
“Are you married Japanese girl?”
“Kind of. I mean I was, but not really anymore.”
“What happened?”
She’s crazy.”
“Crazy?”
“She likes to throw things.”
“What things?”
“etc.”
“That’s a big problem!”
“Yeah, and I’ll probably lose my house and etc.”
“You should etc.”
“I did etc.”
“You should etc.”
“I did that too.”
“Wow! It’s so tough. You should go home.”
“Yeah, I probably should.”
I don’t mind talking to him, it’s just that, neither of us have anything to say. He was trying to help me then, but he wasn’t saying anything I didn’t already know. And asking my wife to please not throw a pot of boiling hot water on me, doesn’t seem like especially good advice.
I sit at the same desk as him (it is a double desk with 2 drawers dividing the middle), so he asked me what some of the papers they left for him are for.
“I dunno. I didn’t get all of these. I can’t read too much of them either, but …I doubt if they’re really that important. I mostly just draw pictures on the backsides.”
So the last few Fridays he has come in, glanced at a page or two of the catalog thick reams of paper they leave waiting for him, then tossed them all, exuberantly, into the garbage.
It’s more than I accomplish in a week…
When lunch time comes, I bring him and everyone else a cup of tea. The old lady who doesn’t make the tea is supposed to make the tea, but she’s also supposed to fill 13/ 14/ 15 lunch trays with 4 or 5 kinds of food, milk, and a plastic straw, so I help her by making and distributing the tea. I gave myself that job because she clearly needed help and I don’t want to look at/ help with meat + milk.
The school psychologist always looks amazed when he sees I’ve brought him a cup of tea. It amuses me, mildly, to see him do this, because it’s just a fucking cup of tea, + anyone can walk a cup of tea across a room (even my cat). He asks me why I don’t eat the same school food as all of them, and I have so far refrained from telling him that I don’t consider it food.
“There’s no meat in that.” <pointing to my lunch>
“That’s why I like it.”
“You’ll get sick.”
“It’s been years and years and it hasn’t happened yet.”
“Why don’t you eat the meat like us?”
“It’s bad for you, bad for the animals, bad for the environment…”
“You need meat to be strong!”
“No you don’t! Look, I’m plenty strong!”
He watches me flex until he feels obliged to say that I am strong.
The funny lady who wanted to get transferred is still here, and that came up in a class of hers too.
There was a page in the book with a Japanese person ordering food at a restaurant (all in English). After reading + repeating what’s in the book a few times, she decided we should act it out for the class. She ordered steak, chicken soup, and a salad with a certain kind of dressing then sat quietly – expectantly. She continued to wait for no apparent purpose, so I went to the back of the room, took a shoe off, then brought it to her and told her that her steak was ready. I stole a book from a kid, told her it was a salad, and dumped the kid’s pencil case out on top of it, as though it was dressing. (I think a dirty chalkboard eraser became the soup.) She looked happy, and I apologized to the kid, who had found it fairly amusing. She smiled and said we would change places, but the menu in the book wasn’t exactly vegan friendly. She asked what I would like, and waited expectantly.
“…Uh…, …I’ll …just have …some ……..tofu.”
She nodded, pretended to write, “And?”, and she waited some more.
“Um, …and some …tofu soup.”
“And?”
” …and tofu salad. I dunno!”
“And how do you want your tofu cooked?
“What?! …Uh. …not cooked? It doesn’t matter.”
“What kind of sauce do you want on your tofu?”
“…sauce?! …….. Chocolate?”
“and what kind of dressing do you want for your tofu salad?”
“oil and vinegar?”
While everyone slowly ceased laughing, she explained that I never eat any meat, milk, eggs, etc, but that I still look good, + seem quite healthy. I thought, in the interests of fairness, that I ought to point out that I had gotten a little fatter over the last winter, but she laughed once, loudly, authoritatively, as if to dare me to a fat exposing contest I had no hopes of winning. She’s funny.
She’s feisty like a feisty old lady would be, but she isn’t old enough to refer to as “a feisty old lady”. Give her another 25 years and she’ll fit the stereotype. When the town doesn’t have the psychologist come, she takes phone calls and sullen slow conversations in the hallway with the kids who have inappropriate: hairstyles/ or socks.
When he does come, she tells him where, when, and who he’s supposed to talk to, because there is, somehow, more to the counseling criteria than just wearing the wrong color socks.
The Japanese assistant English teacher, who was afraid of her, does not seem to be afraid of her anymore, probably because he is no longer an assistant English teacher. Now one of the real English teachers is an assistant, and he is a real teacher. He seems to have improved a lot, and rather suddenly, but he still confuses the hell out of all of us, especially the kids, who sometimes seem to understand the English he teaches them better than he does.
The nice lady is the best at English, but she’s the one who is an assistant now. She has concerned looks on her face at times when he is speaking, but she doesn’t want to interrupt him in front of the class and ask if he knows what he’s saying either. I have that problem in all my classes. I often have to read from the book, the board, or a list of words, so the kids can “copy my pronunciation”, but they don’t copy my pronunciation, …and they never have. They copy the other teachers, three out of four of whom pay little heed to my pronunciation, which makes me little more than a vocal decoration.
Some notable examples:
Lan-gij ≠ Language
Car-eh and lice ≠ Curry and Rice
Unchill ≠ Until
Oh-ren-gee ≠ Orange
Be-ray-gee ≠ Village
Nanba Foa ≠ Number 4
Orgy – Aussie (That was my wife’s.)
One day, the one guy asked a kid something mildly bad like: “What food eat breakfast?” I corrected him, tactfully, and was hoping I would not need to embarrass him further, when he followed through with: “Do you basketball player?”
The kid said “Yes I do.”, which probably is the most apt response. The assistant English teacher, however, seemed to have been expecting a “Yes I am.” type response, so he taunted the kid the way the funny lady does.
He laughed and said “I ask: “Do you baseball player?”
Now that’s funny, because it’s every bit as bad as before, and a totally different question.
I had to stop him then and explain that the kid wasn’t really wrong. I told him what he ought to have asked, and I really don’t know if he understood me at all. There’s a communication problem between he and I.
They all like me, but they fear me too because I cast doubts on their competency.
It is my opinion that when you ask a kid: “How many times have you ever been to Hokkaido?”, then you stop them in front of the class and instruct them to answer simply: “Yes” or “No”, you should bear with a minor tarnishing of your esteemed honor.
Most recently, the funny lady was writing: “I want Hikari to have a cup of coffee together.” on the board. There was a table in her way, so she had me write the last 4 letters for her. I wrote them, then looked at it and realized that it only came to a sentence fragment. I quickly brushed over that last word with my fingers and wrote “with me.” instead. That’s an actual sentence. “I want Hikari to have a cup of coffee with me.” I did my job properly, but she was giving me theatrically evil looks. – She’s funny, like I said. “You should make that neater.” she pouted. I took the eraser and slowly, carefully erased all the smudges on the blackboard around the last 2 words, leaving them, effectively, as messy as ever. She glowered some more.
Then she started writing: “I asked Ryan to erase the blackboard.” but, again, she couldn’t reach over the table to finish writing the sentence, and asked me to finish doing it instead. I did it, and I looked at her, and she was glowering again.
“I wrote the sentence in yellow! Why did you use the green chalk?!” she demanded.
“You took all the yellow chalk away!” I protested – giggling.
She smiled and looked disgusted at the same time. She pushed a teensy little stub of yellow chalk in my hand and demanded I fix it. She was staring and pretending to be angry, and this time she stole the eraser! The only thing I could do was erase it with my fingers (and smudge it up again), or trace over the green chalk with the tiny yellow chalk fragment she had given me. I found that whole predicament quite funny and laughed as I wrote, so it came out even messier than the last time. Everyone was amused by this exchange.
Another time, in another class, there was a word on the board in Japanese – surrounded by hearts. I asked the ex-assistant teacher what it said. He looked at it, laughed by himself, then went back to reading his notebook.
So that’s what it means!
I looked over his shoulder at his notebook. Holy Shit! He has little post-it notes all over it, covered with the same sorts of irregularly worded, bad questions he likes to ask.
While he was pacing around asking everyone individually “How weather today?” I got my red pen out, and wrote the acceptable/ understandable forms of the questions. Crossing out absolute gems such as:
“Does she a high school student?”
“How get train station?”
“Are you tennis player play tennis?”
“What can man do against such reckless hate?”
Then he must have lost that little scrap of paper, because all of his classes begin with similar weird broken queries. I could manage to ask a few questions myself if he gave me pause enough to do it, but I might unwittingly stray from the structure he, feisty, the other 2 and all the students have studied. They might (possibly) feel foolish momentarily if I let a word they don’t know slip. I also think he (the ex assistant) likes to run the class all by himself for a change and not have to rely on a lowly (non-ex) assistant.
So, I just stand there and listen to him butcher and brutalize simple grammar.
One time while he was talking I gathered together all the watering cans I saw in a classroom, put them all next to the only plant they had, and waved my hands around like I was confused. Why would you have 3 watering cans and only one plant? Also, why did no one ever water the single dead dry plant (with any of the 3 watering cans)? He heard chuckles and guffaws and turned, confused at my desktop arrangement of watering cans and plant, but he only slowed his speech down a little, and only for a moment.
Sometimes I remember to bring a few scraps of paper, so I can draw pictures.
The kids ask me what I’m doing while he’s talking, and I say:
“I’m drawing pictures. What are you doing?” And they say:
“We are drawing pictures too.” And they show me,
but my pictures are better!
They pay me for this (I think), but they don’t pay me very well.
There’s a guy up in the front of the teacher’s room who teaches a few math classes each week and talks loudly to himself, or to no one else in particular, the rest of the time. He is priceless!
“Oh!! The meeting is starting in 5 minutes!” he calls out from behind his wall of papers. I look up and look around. We are the only 2 people in the room. He’ll figure it out. Silence! He looks up at the silence and sees I am the only one here (and I don’t go to the meetings.) He looks back down at his papers for a few seconds and informs himself (and nobody else), loudly, that there is nobody else here. I murmur my accent as he runs out the door to the meeting.
Sometimes he’ll be sitting up there working away at his computer, and he’ll yell out a problem to no one in particular. “It’s cold! Are you cold? I’m cold!”: in rapid succession. It’s 12.5 degrees Celsius. We’re all cold, but I’m less cold in my 4 sweaters. “You should put a sweater on.” I call out, helpfully. 5 to 10 seconds pass before he calls out to no one in particular again: “I think I’ll put a sweater on!”
“That’s a good idea.” I call back. He doesn’t seem to hear.
I walked through the open men’s room door one day to find him pantless on the toilet with the stall door wide open. He looked like “the Thinker” …but with glasses, and pants around his ankles. I smiled casually and nodded, as if to say: “I realize that you are shitting absentmindedly where anyone (myself) can see you, but I have tact.”. He nodded his head in acknowledgement …very …slowly, then I heard the door squeal and bang shut.
Priceless!
They pay an old woman to make tea early in the morning, and to take care of the gardens outside. She likes to chat and to give me odd handfuls of vegetables growing around the place. My “mother in law” no longer mails giant boxes full of vegetables I don’t like, and could never finish eating even if I did like them, so I like to get the odd little bits this old lady gives me. She tells me what they are when I don’t know, and tells me what they are when I do know.
“A tomato you say?”
I was gazing, dreamily, out the window of another boring class one day, when I saw her out on a hill side in the sun digging holes by herself. It was summertime at this point, and the board of education had bought 30 new rose bushes to make the school look nice. She planted 3 of them in a little over an hour. When my class was over with, I went out to help her. I grabbed a pick axe, swung the head down and wiggled it to loosen up the dirt. The second time I did it the head snapped clean off. I’ve never even heard of a pick axe that can’t withstand the force of a little bit of shallow dirt! She told me there was another one under the principle’s window, so I went to get it. I waved at the principle through the window, pointed to the broken pick axe, then the other one, and he made the ‘Okay’ sign (nervously). The 3rd time I swung that one I hit a buried rock, and the metal bent. I bent it back into place with my foot (which you reallyshouldn’t be able to do), then I went and got a shovel. We got 18 more of them into the ground in an hour and a half. (The other 9 plants went home with a few of the teachers – but not with me.)
I was glad to be outside, help an old lady, and make a little piece of the world a little prettier.
A week later, the principle went out and trimmed back all the pine trees. He left giant piles of branches everywhere. – Not everywhere exactly, but on top of the places we had planted the rose bushes. They were all buried under heaping piles of yellow, orange, and eventually brown branches for more than a month, so there are no more rose bushes. The ones we had put in the islands of barren dirt near the entrance to the parking lot, where there were no pine trees, were pulled out and discreetly thrown away. I asked the old lady why.
“Old ladies talk a lot” was the major take home point of that exchange; I like to rephrase it more poetically as: “ roses have thorns”.
—————————–
It seems like a shame to give up on it when I finally have a respectable place to live, several pieces of furniture, big thick leg muscles to get me through my commute up the mountain, a handful of friends, and a work schedule that doesn’t violate the work rules.
Last year, I had to work 5 out of 6 classes most days. It would have violated the work rules …if there were any work rules.
The work rules were bullshit anyway.
The company I worked for years ago had set a limit on how many classes per week a school could force a person to teach. It’ sounded nice during my job interview, but they never enforced it. I suspect it was just another way for them to charge the schools more money. They were good at strategizing ways to get more money! They paid us with money from the schools, and sometimes they stole it back from us.
The company I work for now, has more jobs, in better places, with worse pay. They adopted many of the same money grubbing strategies that my old company (and most other companies) have put in place, but they have less (false) regard for fairness, and no pretend rules to protect you.
Has a lengthy, yet incomplete, list of grievances concerning my present employer. I found the page while waiting for those bastards to get a working contract to me.
I’m still waiting.
I added 1 to 3 paragraphs of comments regarding each and every one of this union’s grievances while waiting (…but it was boring, and otherwise ill advised to try and squeeze 11 year’s worth of complaints into the margins of an essay already far too long for anyone else to want to read. This abbreviated version is shorter at the very least, which is a good thing at this point).
Now if I continue working for these bastards, I will join this union and hope that things can be made to improve. Their demands, which I’ve borrowed here, are succinct and already typed up.
The list of Demands:
“1. Management eliminate temporary employment status for all union members…”
—–They give people a series of short term contracts instead of just hiring them outright. This enables them to keep a tighter rein on you, fire you when they want without severance, and screw you out of the benefits you would be guaranteed under law (if the laws were followed) etc.
“2. Management inform the local and union well in advance of any changes to working conditions, management, terms of employment or shugyo kisoku work rules. “
—–They can change the rules to suit themselves whenever it suits them to do it …much like how your 6 year old nephew alters the rules of soccer to allow himself to pick the ball up with his hands when he’s losing.
It’s equally surprising to see how badly they suck at what they do.
“6. Management obtain consent from any union member before scheduling work on weekends. “
—– This doesn’t happen often, but it does happen. I never have plans, so it hasn’t caused me any great harm, but they ought not to be able to arbitrarily decide that you must work for them on a Sunday when you might have had plans, religion, or a part time job.
8. Management immediately disclose and explain each year’s financial documents, including profit-loss statement and balance sheet.
—– If their foreign workers were aware that the Board of Education was paying $5,000 per month for their services, and they were only being paid $1,800 (with no benefits) for doing all of the work, buildings would burn. The president confessed to me that this is not as easy to accomplish as it once was, but they still do it as often as they can.
They also take the other tact by quoting prices so low no one can compete …and better companies can’t afford to pay a decent salary anymore. The only way they can make a profit off certain contracts, is to skimp on and cheat their staff.
Even the Japanese staff (who actually get enrolled in health insurance and) who are expected to remain with one company for most of their working lives, quit this place remarkably quick.
“11. Management end its policy of paying pro-rated salaries, “
—– Because the school was closed on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th of April, my company will reduce my salary the relative weight of 3 days (if they pay me). School will be closed From July 21st until the end of August, so I will only get 3/4ths of my salary for July, then nothing at all the next month. They say that the school boards set this policy, but more knowledgeable people have told me that is a lie. There’s a lot of conflicting information out there, but they do lie about other things. Other companies take in money for August. It appears to us as though the school Boards pay our company for August too. They get the same pool of money as ever, but they do not pay us. Now they can keep their prices low, and still make money!
I’m careful, and I don’t spend a lot, but it isn’t easy to save money with a job like this, and other people have far more serious problems as a result of it.
There is a clause in our contracts this year that claims that they can fire us at any time without any warning, and under no conditions will they ever pay us severance (as the law requires). It wouldn’t stand up in court, but most of us don’t know the laws here and we could hardly afford to pay a lawyer if we were inclined to sit through a 3 year legal battle.
“12. Management pay full actual transportation costs to all members.”
—– It’s a Japanese custom I don’t understand, but it is prevalent across the country. I get $100 each month to compensate my travel costs to and from school. Pedaling a bicycle uphill doesn’t require an extra $100 per month, so I get a nice little bonus from my transportation choice. But anyone driving 20k to work or actually attending the meetings as ordered, will be taking a loss on gas costs with the allocation.
“13. Management increase the salary of union members working at elementary schools to Y260,000 per month and of union members working at Jr. high schools to Y290,000 per month.”
—– Those numbers are not extravagant. They would only appear that way by comparison. We currently get Y 150,000 to Y240,000, but that Y240,000 includes all bonuses (such as the transport cost) and nobody gets that much without a doctorate in education (in which case you ought to be earning 3 times 240,000). It’s an advertised salary they try to coax you into attending an interview with, and it would only be an average low paying salary besides. 5 years ago I was paid Y268,000 to do the same work, but competition from companies like mine has lowered the rates on offer.
“14. Management put all “performance bonuses” into members’ salaries. “
—–We’re promised an extra $200 per month if we’re never: late, sick, or leaving early. That is straightforward and justifiable, but we have to fax our schedule back to them every Friday afternoon to prove it.
They have one fax machine and 400 odd people all trying to get their schedule faxed there at the same time, on the same day. If they don’t receive that fax …a very likely prospect, they can cut your bonus. I get a fax through on a Friday once or twice a month. They have always given me my full or prorated bonus each month so far, but I don’t have a lot of confidence in their continued good intentions.
“15. Management count the training days forced upon members during July as additional working days to be paid at an additional Y15,000 per day and refund full actual transportation costs.”
. $80 odd dollars to use the highway (plus gas and time) to get to this farce of an event, then drive home for another $80, or pay for your own hotel room (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) for 4 days. What do they talk about for 4 days at the company headquarters?: – How to fill in the form you need to fax. – How to act happier at school. – How they feel about employees who join the union. Why do they even bother with that crap?
They do it because they want us to use our vacation days to avoid it. If we take a vacation during the year, they have to find and pay a substitute, or refund the sum of our vacation time back to the schools. They don’t want to do that.
They have another ”training” session in December (usually the few days after Christmas and before New Years). Same rules apply then. And both “training” sessions just happen to use up the average balance of all the vacation days they give you (fewer than required by law). So if you do want to go see your family for Christmas, you have to suffer for it in July, or quit your job (in which case they’ll conveniently forget to send you your last month’s salary.
“26. Management assign trainers with ALT experience to run training sessions.”
—– The people who do run those “Training” events are as often as not, Japanese people reading notes off a piece of paper regarding a job they have never done, do not understand, and do not qualify for.
“19. Management refund all costs for medical checks required of union members.”
—– There is another law which requires employers to pay for a health check for each employee every year. They didn’t send me any information the first year, or this year, but last year they did, despite other people complaining that they were forced to pay for it themselves. Odd system isn’t it?
“23. Management give 10 days paid annual leave to union members who have worked for six months (12 after 18 months, etc. according to Labor Standards Law) to be used at their own discretion, and not as management dictates.”
—–They send out letters telling you that they are allowed to decide when you will take your vacation. That too is a pack of lies. You have a right to chose. They cannot deny you it. But they could tell their newer foreign staff anything, and they wouldn’t/ couldn’t know any better. My 1st contract was for 7 months (to replace a guy from another company). By law I should have received 5 full days paid vacation; They gave me 3. They gave me 7 last year, instead of the 11 I was owed, and they told me I could only use them on the days when school was closed anyway.
“24. Management use teacher evaluations only to help teachers further improve their performance and not let evaluations affect pay.”
—– I have had flawless evaluations – all of them. The only complaint the company could put to me was that I might have said “Hello” louder when I came into class one time. How has my remarkable level of performance effected the rate at which my pay raises?
-It’s a trick question. They never raise your salary under any circumstances they can avoid. But a poor performance evaluation (derived from watching one class chosen by them – looking for things to mark to your disadvantage – with no forewarning), that will allow them to make the claim that you deserve less money, and that you’re lucky to still be working for them.
“27. Management schedule ALT meetings only between 8:30am and 3:30pm and outside lunch breaks.”
—– As opposed to random weekends or evenings when you might want to cook dinner, go to your 2nd job, or not work impromptu forced (and unpaid) overtime.
Reading this clause makes me wonder if the union officials are even aware that we don’t even get lunch breaks.
“28. Management arrange for all union members to have lockers at their workplaces (schools).”
—– It doesn’t sound like a big deal until you come to realize how “prop heavy” they expect your classes to be.
I’ll just leave 15 rubber hammers sitting on top of my desk all year; That’ll be fine.
They only turn the heaters on under very specific weather conditions?
It’s 12.4 C/ 54 degrees Fahrenheit indoors?!!
Do I really need to carry 5 extra sweaters (on my bike/ on the subway) everyday?
Yes, apparently.
——–
Their list went up to #34 and omitted certain things I believe ought to have been included, things such as:
forcing us to work 2 full months before seeing a dime of that 1st month’s pay,
You can borrow some of your own salary from the company early for both: a processing fee, and a rate of interest paid back to them. (That’s a money maker there! That’s probably why they delay paying us.),
Charging workers Y20,000 –Y30,000 per month to borrow a company car when cars of similar quality can be purchased for Y70,000,
not providing us with health insurance, as they are legally obliged to do,
Calling us to talk about work at 9pm, when we would be very glad to forget about work,
“Forgetting” to pay 30 days severance to the people who get fired when the company loses a position to competitors,
“Forgetting” to pay people their last month’s (or 2 month’s) salary when they quit,
Promising people jobs they don’t have, then sending them on their way when they haven’t materialized,
“Blank contracting” – Asking people to sign a contract with no salary or work location specified, so that the company can fill in those pesky minor details later,
“No Contracting” – as is the case with me: Promising to get you a contract soon, but never actually doing it. Or they wait as long as possible to bring you an insultingly poor contract. After you have already put in several hundred hours of work, and you find you have no written guarantee that you will have any compensation for your time and efforts, …then you might sign something crappy out of desperation.
That last one happened to the other American guy as well. He had never worked for them before, and had no written validation that his month and 3 day’s effort would get him anything unless he signed the crappy contract they eventually got around to bringing him.
His concerns are still not laid to rest, however, as they never asked him for his bank account number, and they won’t know where to send his money when payday eventually comes.
He had had an interview with them a few years ago and they tried to “Blank contract” him. He walked out disgusted to hear him tell it. It makes sense. It’s a bad place.
The problem is:
All the places are bad places.
They all have the same sets of dirty tricks. Some of them are just a bit more organized, or a bit more underhanded.
This past year, my friend got tired of watching the English teacher he was working with throw baseballs in student’s faces, and kick their legs because they didn’t understand things he hadn’t taught them, so he quit his job. I recommended my company hire him to work one of those nearby jobs that the girl I met on the internet, her boyfriend, and another guy in the next town all quit.
She said that the company offered each of them an extra Y30,000 per month to not quit,
but quit they did!
I was thinking of going back home, but an extra $370 or so per month would encourage me to stay and enjoy all my new furniture a little while longer. When the guy wrote to reconfirm that I was staying, I told him it would depend. I told him how my wife had left, how I had to pay for everything now, and how staying wasn’t as worthwhile as it had been, also reminding him that I had been promised a raise the year before (of course they neglected to give it to me). He made no comment on the salary, but said he didn’t need to know about my personal life.
Fuck!
It makes you wonder why he had asked how my life was going in his message!
You’d think, just from a business standpoint, that he would be interested to know that I would be losing both: my home and my work eligibility in the future …but he ain’t too fuckin’ smart.
Neither am I.
I waited a month and 6 days before I was even shown a contract, and after all that time, they just brought me that same old contract (unchanged) again. I had been offered a fun job that paid double what I make now. Why did I sit tight and wait for a contract from these dunces again?
I didn’t sign it, just like I implied I wouldn’t. I circled the salary, wrote “WTF?!!!” next to it, and handed it back to the woman.
She said: “Okay. I see. But what do these 3 letters mean?” – implying that she did not actually “see”.
“They mean ‘What the Fuck’, as in: ‘What the Fuck is this?!! I am surprised because I said “No” to this a long time ago.’” (As a teacher it is my responsibility to pass useful information such as this on.)
She told me to wait, and called the man who had e-mailed me. She put me on the phone.
“Hi” I said
“Hi“ he said.“ Ms. Tanaka said you had a problem with your contract.”
“Yeah… About that…, No.”
“What do you mean ‘No’?”
“Well, I mean: ‘No!’”
“…But it’s the same contract we gave you last year.”
”Yeah, I did notice that.”
Etc.
A week passed with no word from them, so I sent them a letter of resignation, to make things extra clear.
—————-
Borderlink,
I told Mr. Okubo, way back in March, that I would not work for you for another year – unless I was paid appreciably more.
If this needed clarifying, you might have asked.
Instead, Ms. Tanaka called on the 4th of April, and told me to be at work on the 5th. “What about my contract?” I asked. “It isn’t ready. Soon.”, she assured me
I was not shown a contract until May 10th!! How do you excuse that?!
You will probably be aware that I refused to sign that contract – because I will not work for you for another year for that same low rate of pay.
I have waited one more week for a response from you. – Nothing.
Understand:
– I have no intention of working for you for 200,000 + bonuses any longer.
– Bring me an acceptable contract containing the same raise in pay you offered to the 3 teachers I spoke to in XXXX City. – Do this before May 31st
– Or –
– Take this letter as my 2 week notice of resignation, as required by law.
–
I will pass a copy of this letter to both my school and the Board of Education if I have not had an acceptable response from you by next week.
Ryan Snyder
May 17th, 2012
———————–
Another week passed before I got a curious long phone call from the man. He said that they never pay raises, but when they do pay raises, it’s only like 2 or 3 thousand yen, 5 thousand yen for exceptional cases, and that is company policy which he cannot circumvent. He went on about politics, and how performance evaluations could be considered, but that he didn’t think my performance ratings warranted a pay raise. (I had read on the internet somewhere how they will try to convince you that you aren’t any good at what you do, so that you won’t be able to claim you deserve better pay. It’s a common tactic. It’s only by the grace of their hearts, and their patient understanding that they allow you to earn so much profit for them.)
I also remember several occasions where the woman who was in charge of me had visited the school, and was absolutely amazed at all the good things the other teachers were saying about me.
“Wow! They really like you, really really like you!”
“Well …there’s no accounting for taste.”
I should have had her write that down (she wouldn’t have).
She got an assistant partway through the next year, and the pair of them were telling me together how much my school liked me.
“You’re not going to pay more though are you?” I asked.
“No.” she said.
They both quit mysteriously a few months later.
The man on the phone gave me a long pause when I mentioned that they had said that – that I was good at what I did. Then he offered to show me copies of “my” performance reviews, so I could see for myself that he was telling the truth …but all the identifying (/ the relevant) details would have to be removed for “policy” reasons. That’ sounds more than just a little suspicious I think.
I would have pointed that out to him, but he went back to saying something about maybe he could get me an extra 2,000 yen per month from September if I tried really hard for the next several months, and I cut him off and said it would be the amount I specified in my letter before Thursday (as per the letter) or Thursday would be the end of it. He sounded really surprised. He asked how much I would want just to get me to stay until summer vacation. “255,000” I told him
“How about 250,000?” he squeaked
“Yeah! How about 255,000?”
“I will tell the president when he gets back from Osaka tomorrow. I can’t decide it myself.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Thank you for taking the time to speak to me.”
“Yeah, you too.”
The next day there was an e-mail. It said that they would like to come visit and talk with me. I didn’t know what good it would do them to drive here 2 hours (at more than $160 round trip), not when we had already come to such a clear understanding over the phone, but I didn’t write back that same night.
The woman who had brought me the same contract was waiting politely in the principle’s office early the next morning. She said that the president of the company, the guy on the phone, and someone else I was expected to know would all be driving down to visit me on Tuesday – 2 days before my supposed last day. She also said that she didn’t approve of them handing out the contracts more than a month after people had already begun working either.
Although my social interactions are admittedly – limited, the range of opinions I found myself offered, were even more limited. Everyone complains about delays and pay levels, our sub-human commodity status, but why doesn’t anyone do something about it? They sit and accept it just like the Japanese people we are consistently set aside from.
These are the reactions I got when I mentioned my threat of resigning:
“Oh?” – CG
“I mean, …you can try, but they will nevergive you a raise.” – OOAG
“Well, …it was nice knowing you.” – OAG
“I think it’s good you’re doing this. It serves them right. I doubt if it will do you any good, but …good!” – CL
“Meow” – K
“I guess it’s worth a try…” – CL’F
“Goodbye Ryan.” – MPXW
(One was my cat, one my soon to be ex-wife, one was the other American guy, one was another – other American guy, one was the Canadian lady, one was the Canadian lady’s Canadian husband, one was one of their friends (who went to the pair of birthday parties.) I jumbled up the order though.)
I didn’t expect this almost uniform hopelessness. The Canadian lady, who never had a lot of luck here, was the only other one to think it worthwhile. She takes risks, and puts the effort into trying things, which is probably why she’s had to face defeat before.
It’s good I wasn’t looking for encouragement or any more solidarity than I found. Occasionally I can be glad I am my own type of person. I know what another year of this is worth to me, and if I can not get that here I don’t need to stay here.
The e-mail and telephone guy called again on Monday to inform me again that they would be coming to see me on Tuesday. “4:30 pm! and we would like to come to your house if it is alright with you”
At 5:15pm on Tuesday I got on my bike to head to the post office. I figure if I can wait 45 minutes with no word from them, they can bear with waiting outside my door for 10 minutes. That’s when I saw a man in a suit out on the street waving at me. He wasn’t quite flabbergasted, but he was deeply unnerved that I would be heading out while they were supposed to be coming in to see me.
“5:15 is not 4:30.” – I explained. This did not seem to put him at ease. He said they had gotten lost and couldn’t find my house, which is completely understandable. They also wanted to go talk at a café or something instead of my house, which means I didn’t need to have stayed up ‘til 2:30am cleaning my house the night before.
I had been very thorough, but I have no vacuum cleaner. More importantly, I have a light colored cat, and they all wore dark suits, so it was the best decision they could have made.
We walked around the block to where they had parked their cars. The president was on his cell phone for another 5 or 10 minutes, so I showed the e-mail/ phone guy the train.
He didn’t want to see the train, because he didn’t believe there was a train. I guess he assumed I was speaking Japanese badly/ trying to say something else (like: ‘this is the house where the Tranny is’), but I know what I’m talking about.
Somebody keeps an actual train in their driveway. God knows why, but they do. He took a photo and said he found it inspiring, as though any dream could come true if you work hard to make it happen.
“I just wonder how the hell they got it there. It’s a train, and the train tracks are way down that way …so it’s not like they can ride it around or anything. A great big train just sitting in the driveway”
“Marvelous!”
“Well…, …curious anyway.”
The other person in a suit I was supposed to have known was not there, so I still don’t know them, but they substituted in the woman who brought me the contract. She asked me which house was mine. I said it was the yellow one with the little red car with the Kagoshima license plates. She said she had visited the town I used to live in while she was living in Kyushu, but she was talking about the famous horses there, and we never had any famous horses there. We didn’t have anything except a rest stop and some landslides.
She seemed happy about it anyway.
The president, as it happens, was the guy who took me to my 1st school, the 1st year I had this sort of job.
I was paid better then than I am now, and I had no rent.
The next year I was paid even better than that, and I was in a place that was absolutely saturated with good scenes for landscape painting.
The year that followed those years, I was paid $440 per month more (more than now) and I was paid for August too!
I’m not starving now by any means, but I can do better.
I have done better.
He explained that the reason the pay is so low now, is because there are more companies around trying to undercut each other. I wouldn’t say that he is entirely to blame, but when I was paid well, his company was not around undercutting everyone else. (I left our old company to visit my mom when she had cancer. He left our old company to steal half the teachers and customers to start his own company.)
Younger people, and the curious will put up with this level of pay for a short time because they want to see what Japan is like. Older people who have been in Japan for ages will put up with this level of pay (grudgingly) because they are comfortable in this environment.
I have some furniture finally, but this isn’t as interesting as it once was. Almost all of my friends (all but one) went home 8 or 9 years ago. The greater part of the Japanese people don’t want to try being friends with me because I am less conveniently predictable and because they think that I will move back home before too long. It’s been so long now, that going home would be like going to a strange exciting new place.
When you can see the water around you turning yellower by degrees, it’s a good idea to get out of the pool. Yes?
He made some low paying business deals. It doesn’t obligate me to help him a third time.
I could put up with shit pay and poor treatment for another year, but that’s what I did last year …and the year before that. My life will not improve in this regard until I do something, and they will not stop their shady dealing until people start sticking it back to them.
He apologized for having the contracts ready so late this year.
“They were late last year too.”
“Oh, were they?”
“There is a difference between the day before you start work, and 40 days late, but it shouldn’t be like that in either case.”
“It is sometimes unavoidable though.”
“How is that? If you never give anyone a raise anyway, why does it take so long to photocopy the old contract, and just change the dates?”
“What did he say?”
“He said: ‘Since you never give anyone a raise anyway, why does it take so long to copy the old contract, and just change the dates?’ ”
-A large increase in the number of workers and locations they were able to secure for themselves this year, loss of a few important office staff’ They’re always losing office staff… it sounds like a reasonable excuse – except that it does not explain the discrepancy between several minutes worth of work, and several week’s worth of waiting
At one point I mentioned how ‘their not providing any health insurance <required by law> was further incentive for me to leave’. He sat there with the classic stone face – the one you make when somebody farts loudly, and you don’t want to react and embarrass them further.
Pretending to not hear is a common Japanese business tactic.
Honestly though, he seemed a lot more straightforward than I imagined. Mind you, I amvery gullible, and he had said some things I wanted to hear. He said they were now the 2nd largest company of its kind in Japan. If and when they are able to hold the dominant position in the market, they will be better able to improve the education system, and some of the difficulties many of us face. I hope that’s the truth, but sounds an awful lot like all those chubby people who say they’re going to go on a diet as soon as X happens.
X never happens, and if it somehow does, the dieting gets pushed back until X + Y.
The guy who had called me several times assumed I wouldn’t know their current advertised pay rates because I hadn’t logged onto a popular job site in years. He explained it to the president in Japanese, further assuming I couldn’t understand Japanese, all evidence to the contrary. Did they forget that they had been speaking to me in Japanese off and on for the past 45 minutes? Why are Japanese people so consistently inconsistent with their application of logic? I haven’t logged onto the site in years, but I still get all their e-mails in my junk-mail folder, so I’ve seen that Y240,000 number put out very recently.
I told them -in Japanese, that I was aware that they were offering more money (offering – in theory).
“Your town won’t pay that much though!”
“They pay my Nigerian friend in the same town Y20,000 more than your top salary anywhere!”
“Well, that’s a special case which nobody seems to understand.”
He said that 245,000 per month was the most they could pay me. I had been resolute with my demand for the Y268,000 pay I was getting from their competitor 6 years ago, but I wasn’t ready to fly home that same week, and they didn’t seem as evil as all the information everywhere had made them out to be. They were clumsy and less than completely honest to be sure, but they were human, not entirely opportunistic, …not evil. I told him that I would stay through the end of this semester for that much money, provided he also write me a letter of recommendation that I can use to find a “real job” one day. “I will do that.” he told me.
Then he tried to clarify, to avoid further misunderstandings, that the new pay scale would not be valid for the 2 months I had already worked. He said they would only be paying me the extra amount for the months I haven’t worked yet, and I “misunderstood” that straight away!
(I have since been paid several times since writing this, and the salary is at the agreed upon amount, and for the full duration thus far, but you can see why someone might be remiss to trust them.)
The internet paints a much darker portrait of this operation
“Managers constantly changing and office staff who don’t have any idea of what is going on. BL president Morikawa came to one of the weekly meeting to try and clear things up. Was visibly pissed off when we brought out copies of the Labour Standards Law to prove he was in the wrong. “Where did they get that?”
Workers in company housing ended up with extra fees added on before moving out. One married couple working at BL had this problem. But, since they were leaving the country, BL just witheld their pay, knowing full well that they couldn’t do anything about it.” Etc.
That old bone headed mule I worked for (briefly) in Kagoshima, was also withholding people’s final pay – their last 2 month’s salary to be exact!. He even had a clause in his contracts stating he was allowed to do it (although, again, it isn’t legal). I never met the people who replaced me, but I heard that they were never paid a single yen for the 2 months they gave him. They didn’t read their contracts carefully enough to expect it coming, and they didn’t know it was bullshit when he did that to them. All of these companies are bad, some utterly terrible! I’m not a mobster or a weightlifter, but I am reasonably fit and I can intimidate old men well enough when I suspect they’re going to screw me over for the umpteenth time. I read contracts carefully for clues, but some things you have to learn from your own sad experience.
He explained how they used to be able to make a lot of money, but these days the economy is bad. I didn’t think the state of the general economy would be relevant to the budgets of a few school boards. My school spent thousands of dollars on flutes this year! Flutes are important, I’ll grant you that, I just mean to say that teachers and employees are important too. All the teachers around me get their pay and their bonuses, same as ever. The general economy doesn’t seem too shaken, but with all the fears from earthquakes and radiation, he said there were only two thirds as many qualified foreign people here to do the sort of job I do for so little. I ought to be paid more.
That fun job I mentioned that paid double…
Somebody wanted a fit foreign man to ride a bike around Nagoya and hand out samples of a new sport’s drink to passers by. A full year’s pay for 7 month’s “work” – riding a bike around, …but I didn’t want to pack up again and move to Nagoya.
(What is the point of Nagoya?).
My company said they would pay me an extra Y30,000 per month if I went and took one of the jobs that nobody wants in Nigata. I’d like to know more about exiting your house from your second story windows in winter (deep deep snow), but my imagination works well enough that I don’t need to waste an extra year of my life in the experience.
Ever since I died that one time, I’ve tried to make the best use of my time. There are other things I should try before I get too too too much older.
I always wanted to go to an art school, meet some artsy people, and get better at doing things I do from compulsion anyway.
I applied to one.
I got into one.
It’s a master’s program in illustration, and I start in7 weeks soon! I’m taking a class in something I cannot spell or pronounce, but it looks interesting. I’ll do the 1st semester online, so I can save money and visit my 91 year old grandfather, while I still have that option. I am excited and afraid, and I will miss this place, …as flawed as I sometimes find it.
My mom reminds me when it’s peoples’ birthdays (except for when it’s hers, in which case my father does the job). Usually I forget about them right away again, but this was a nice round numbered age, and she’s always been kind to me. She was also born 45 years and one day before me.
The school I work at asks all the teachers + staff to write a few lines or paragraphs to be published in their yearly guidebook. Nobody explained it to me last year, and they tried to keep it secret from me this year.
I could explain it or I could copy and paste:
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
“They gave me 2 big sheets of paper and told me to write something, but they didn’t say what. “Anything is okay” they said.
People seem to like to read stories, and they especially seem to like to read Harry Potter stories, so I thought I’d try to write one of them. It’s good to try things! This is my Harry Potter story:
Harry Potter was doing a crossword puzzle and listening to classical music, when a maybe a dragon flew by. We’ll just call it a dragon. That’s easier than me having to describe it. The dragon monster thing noticed how Harry P. had spelled many of the words wrong in his crossword puzzle, and it got angry. Or maybe it’s because those particular monsters don’t like Classical music. Anyway dragon type monster things get angry easily …so I am told.
In either case it attacked him for that reason.
Harry did some magic stuff, but this story happened way back, before he was good at magic – like he is “good” at it in the movies. Also, Ron and Hermione weren’t there then.
(How does Hermione get through the spell check? That’s a crazy weird name.) They both had dental appointments or …something.
So,…
…
…Harry got on his broom, and flew to the other side of the world to where Batman lives to ask him for help.
In addition to being very good at: Aikido, Karate, Judo, Kung-Fu, etc., Batman is also the world’s greatest detective, so he was able to design an effective trap for the dragon/ monster/ thing. We’ll assume that that kind of monster flies very slowly + he had time to do all that, but he’s Batman, so he probably could have. Furthermore let’s assume that it worked and the story ended favorably.
If it were up to me, I’d go out for vegan pizza afterwards.
Also, Batman fixed all the mistakes in Harry’s crossword puzzle. He’s just that cool! The End of my story!”
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
I like that story because it violates pretty much every standard of good writing, also because I stuffed Batman into it. They published it in the school’s yearbook kind of thing with the accompanying illustration. It was a picture of a dragon looking thing with its foot caught in a big mouse trap, Batman doing something spectacular, and Harry Potter using the Goblet of Fire in a flower arrangement. I cut that part out of the story, because there’s a difference between ‘funny bad’, and ‘just way too long bad’.
—————————————-
This past year, they “forgot” to tell me to do it until several days after it was due. I understand Japanese well enough to know that everyone else had a month and a half to work on theirs, and that the guy at the meeting considered everything “submitted and acceptable” several days before I was asked to contribute too. I don’t know why the rules are only disregarded when it concerns me.
I don’t know why the rules are always disregarded when it concerns me, but I did what I could
– including the translations and drawings.
２０１０年の版では不器用くっておもしろい話を書きたかった。
Last year when they asked me to write something, I tried to write a story so clumsy and bad it would be funny.
他の人のことは知らないんでうが私は笑った。It made me laugh anyway.
今年はグードアドバイスを集まったよ。 This year I just put together some “Good Advice” I found:
1. Never try to lift a cat by the tail. (See figure 1)
猫を尻尾で持ち上げるのは最悪アイデアだよ。（図１を参照してください。）
2. It’s much easier to eat less cake than it is to burn off the calories in the extra cake.
沢山運動するより、ケーキを少な目食べて方が効率的に体調を保つ。 (チョッコピナ
ツバターケーキは一番おいしです。)
3. If you go to Okinawa, you should try those little salty cookies. I don’t know what they’re called, but they’re good.
沖縄県に行ったら、それらの少し塩辛いクッキーを試してみて！ 私はそれの名前が解りませんが、おいしかった。
4. Everyone appreciates a person who is concise. (I don’t know if that’s holds true in Japan so much though.)
皆は簡潔である人を高く評価しています。(日本でもそうか？)
5. Translation software has a long way to go yet!
翻訳ソフトはまだまだ…わsたしに愛する鳥。
7. Disco will never die.
ディスコは衰退することはありません!!!
8. Don’t believe everything you hear. (Except for #1. Never do that!)
聞くすべてを信じてはいけない。 （だけどこの上に書いた１は信じろぞ!）
One is that it is raining right now. When the hour is up, I will go home, and my ass will get wet and dirty. I just washed my newer bike 2 days ago too…
My other concern is that my wife is leaving.
I didn’t tell her to go, + I can’t say that I understand her reasons for it (or indeed for most things she does), but at least one of us will probably be happier this way. I’m guessing that it’s me, and that I’ll be a lot happier. So the rain seems like a worse thing.
It’s all here somewhere in the many many pages of text. I like to include everything with any relation to the matters at hand because length is a good deterrent to snooping and it will help me to remember details I would otherwise forget.
Could you, for instance, remember what color pajama pants you were wearing when you rode your bike shirtless to the hospital that early winter morning that you set yourself on fire? I can’t. I didn’t keep them around to remind me, because they were singed and smelled strongly of pain. …They were probably plaid.
I began this in June (2011). It contains the following segments – organized loosely around themes:
Pants
Tequila
Moneys
Cats
Foods
Stress
Abandonment
Marathon Walking
Danger
Discordance
Additional Notes
The Finest Polyester Lounge-Pants Available anywhere!
I keep looking, but they just don’t sell them anymore.
I no longer wear those semi stretchy pants that belonged to my long departed father in law. My thighs have grown beyond their stretch-ability. I went home for Christmas. I went shopping. And now, for the 1st time I can remember, I have pants that fit me.
My mom took me into town so I could start assembling souvenirs, and using up dollars. It was 3 or 4 days after Christmas the 1st time we went out. It should have only taken 1 day to get everything done, but my mom, who was always slow and reluctant to do anything, has become slower, and more reluctant to do anything, which made it a 5 day
.…I don’t want to say ordeal.
Anyway, since I was last in the US a year and a half ago, some of my work pants had frayed more than they should, and some of my “don’t mind being seen in” pants had disappeared, or fallen apart. I could make do with my only 2 pairs of jeans, as I did in November and December, but my cat’s hair really sticks to the darker pair, and my cat clawed small holes in the other pair. He’s a jerk. They’re small holes now, but they’re going to get a lot bigger over a few month’s time. I tried on maybe 12 pairs of jeans with the same set of problems I usually find: my legs can barely fit in the space provided, or my legs fit well but I could stuff a basketball into the extra space in the waistband with me. I found 2 sets of pants in a back corner that I could put on and move around in. They were $36 each, so I just bought the set that was less ugly. Then, after 2 days of not having a belt buckle poking me in the stomach all the time, I decided I should go back and buy the other pair. I was pleased with them, but my father complained they were dirty looking. He’s right about that. They do look dirty, and I didn’t like it at 1st either, but seeing as I can only replace them the next time I get back to the US again, I thought it best that they do look dirty all over; Now when I have some horrible spilling/ staining accident , they’ll look just the same as always. After a few days of my father complaining, and me responding each time, cheerily, that I was thrilled that I could move around freely without holding my pants up with one hand, we drove to some outlet somewhere in Pennsylvania. I didn’t want to go, because it was Pennsylvania, and my time in my own country is always in short supply, but I liked it there. I saw a pair of the same pants there that I was wearing all week, for just $15.99! They weren’t quite as dirty looking either. I even found a pair in a back corner, easily the dirtiest looking, but only $9.99!!! I know I didn’t need 3 new pairs of jeans, but they were a size I can wear comfortably and it would be my last opportunity to get them for another 2 years perhaps.
I really appreciate not growing out of clothes anymore. The stuff I have will fit me for years to come. With that in mind I got a few crazy shirts, and 2 pairs of long underwear to wear under my pants in the winter too.
I got home and put them on the next day, but there was a long tear down the inside thigh of one pair of long underwear, and a hole in the cheaper jeans where a button should have been. My mom found a place in town which could mend clothes, so we went. I told the odd Chinese lady there that my pants had malfunctioned. She said:
“$5. What is wrong?”
“I bought these, but there’s no button.”
“$5. I give you button. Tomorrow you come. $5. You pay now. I Fix.”
I’ve never met a congenial chatty Chinese person, but I expect I may one day. I gave her the $5, and we went back the next day, but the place was all locked up. There was a sign on the door which said that she had gone to the bank. It didn’t say when she went, how long she might be gone, or even where the bank was. I looked in the window and a fluffy white dog with no fur on its head or back looked back at me. We waited around outside for a few minutes and I observed that this $9.99 pair of pants that I had no special need for, was fast becoming very expensive. My mother called there later in the afternoon to see if the pants were ready. The lady said “Pants finished. You come. Sorry I no call you.” When I went back, she explained how she should have patched up the hole and sewed on another button, but it was too much of a hassle for her to do it that way, so she just sewed the hole shut and put a button on top of it. The dog looked up at me, and I wanted to pet it, …but it had no fur on its back, which is more than a little creepy.
I went home and showed my mom how the woman had fixed it, and my mom said she could have done that herself in less time than it took to drive there once (not three times). It reminded me how she said she could sew the problem strap on my helmet, so she did that and got my new long underwear stitched up as well.
I got a $250 bike helmet off of e-bay for $120, because the guy who sold it was too fat in the face. He said he bought it from someone else on e-bay, who cut the end of the chin strap off. It makes sense to do that, because traveling on a bicycle at 40 miles per hour will cause all loose articles of cloth to slap you repeatedly in the wind (in the face). Whoever sold this helmet first must have had a tiny head, or bad luck with scissors, because he did cut that strap awfully short. The next guy couldn’t latch the helmet on, so he sold it for a $130 discount. My mother made it useful in 5 minutes, and hopefully the people on my bike team will stop bothering me about not wearing a helmet.
Bike things are good things, designed for a specific purpose, but they cost a lot! I feel bad for the guy at the bike shop I go to, because I only ever pay him to repair things I wouldn’t/ couldn’t buy there. E-bay! – The solution, and occasional cause to so many problems. I’ll get into that later.
A Gay old time!
My friend, who came here for my wedding, had been asking me to come down to his house for …years. I felt a little guilty for never having gone, but I always felt lazier still. Just the same, you’d think if he can come 14 hours half way around the world for my party once, I could make it 2 hours south for his, …but I went for years and years and years without ever going. My wife doesn’t like people talking at her in (fast) English, so I went this time when she wasn’t around.
After we went to a liquor store and filled up a pair of his many hip flasks, he explained that the party wasn’t at his house, it was at the home of a friend of his. He would mention this friend from time to time and he threw the word “gay” in more than a few times, which I always thought meant he was effeminate, socially awkward or something. Now I didn’t spend enough time with the fellow to rule those 2 possibilities out, but he had a boyfriend, so I think it was meant as that type of gay foremost. His mom, a girl I saw from the opposite side of a room once briefly, and some blond girl with nice boobs were the only women there, but all the gay men (and men who weren’t gay, but who can tell the difference) were more than enough fun all the same! Or maybe it’s just the tequila that was fun, …except it really wasn’t.
While waiting for the party to start, we sipped from the hip flasks and played a game he got for Christmas. I suggested that whoever lost should have to do a shot of something, because wagering compulsory drinking games are interesting for me. I lost 5 times out of 5, which probably wasn’t a fair deal, but my friend seemed aware that he had the definite video game advantage, and said we would only have to do one shot each. It was a nice gesture I think; He is a friend after all, but it was my idea, I agreed to it, and I am a man of my word, so I made sure to drink 5 shots. He got the tequila as a Christmas gift too I think.
We arrived. It was a very nicely decorated house full of dudes. We ignored them all temporarily, got out the tequila and each did a shot. He did a shot of booze because he shot a non hostile video game target. It wasn’t part of the agreement, but whatever; It was his Tequila, and Tequila never hurt anybody. I drank 2 more while watching him talk to the host, and I didn’t think to observe how quickly it would take to get the tequila to affect me. I know it wasn’t as strong as I remembered it being, but that might have been a time delay, or it might have been because I ate a bean burrito from taco bell earlier. (They are Mexican friends. They help each other out. (That’s a bad pun even by my poor standards (Read on.).)) It would have had to have been a long delay, because we went outside to see the Mongolian hut the guy had built, then I wandered around inside for a bit before a friendly gay guy went and fetched me a seat. He was throwing around the word “hetero-flexible”. I found the concept intriguing, but I didn’t want to help evaluate its merits in the non mixed company, because I thought I was the only hetero person there and I didn’t want to have my inflexibility the subject of testing. (I found a gayness scale test on the internet while writing this, tried it out, and scored a 2 out of 7. Apparently I’m gayer than a one or a zero, and I may find it flattering to be admired by gay men. I can handle same sex interactions comfortably well until the cocks start coming out. (That’s not a direct quote.))
I got up for 2 more shots of tequila, and went back in the room where the girl with boobs was. I don’t really need to specify that she was the girl with boobs. She was the only girl there that I saw for more than 4 seconds who wasn’t a 60 year old woman, and they were the only 3. (The only 3 women, not the only 3 boobs. There were 8 boobs (because one of the guys had man boobs which I felt up after complimenting the girl with boobs on her boobs when the conversation turned to boobs, which might have been my fault, or the fault of the 7 shots of tequila, or the pot, but probably not the pot.)). It’s just that I live in Asia… and I’d like to see some boobs.
I don’t know what time we got there to say how long it went on for. I didn’t eat anything at all after 7pm, + that was just a bean burrito. I had a little more than half a flask of schnapps remaining when I went for my 8th and 9th shots of tequila. The nice thing about hard liquor, is that I didn’t have to pee at all either. At some point, I told the girl there how I was finally drunker than I had ever been in my whole life. It was a long standing goal of mine, so I sat down on a couch by a tv to enjoy my drunkenness a few minutes. It was, unbeknownst to me, just before the New Year’s countdown started on TV. It got suddenly crowded, and the door to the outside porch was blocked by a group of people.
“10” they said. I remembered what day it was.
“9”. I didn’t feel too well all of a sudden, and at “8” I felt worse.
“Why are they blocking the fire exit?” I thought to myself while willing my body to remain settled longer.
“7” and “6” I told myself: “I am calm and composed.”
“5” Uh-Oh.
Everyone in the room and on TV said “4” when I threw up. I pinched my mouth shut and contained the worst of it, but there was nowhere I could go with those people all around me. At “2” I threw up again. Suddenly there was a lot of free space around me, a lot more vomit than I would generally care for too. Nasty! I think I made it out the door onto the porch a few seconds into the brand new year, …with assistance. The nice guy who kept the nice house, I’m told, had his mop out within the first minute of the brand new year. He came outside rather quickly all the same and asked if I was done throwing up. I responded by throwing up, saying “No” then, presumably, throwing up again. He asked how much I had had, so I said “8 …no 9 shots of tequila, and this”. And that was the last I saw of the hip flask I was given. At some point I stopped throwing up outside, and I was encouraged to take my pants off in a bathroom. I was wobbly getting them off. I think the friendly big guy was the one who grabbed my hand to keep me from falling over. It was a larger person than me anyway, and they seemed more solidly footed. He must have thought I had regained my balance at the same time that I thought he was going to continue to keep supporting me, and I slammed the back of my head on the edge of a bathtub for the first time in the brand new year. The lump was there for a month.
Then I was in a basement throwing up in a big janitor’s sink, and they were saying they were going to wash my clothes, which makes me wonder if I wasn’t in the basement before being in the bathroom, but whatever… I also remember walking out to my friend’s car and looking down at my clothes and saying “nice pants”, because they were flannel pajama pants I had never seen before. My friend shouted something out the window of his car at the people outside, or at me (because I was throwing up out his window). I apologized to anyone who might have been listening for throwing up so much everywhere. And I think I made a point to mention that I would call it quits after 8 shots of tequila next time. I amended that to 7 shots, then swore off tequila entirely as the next day drew on.
I didn’t feel too bad when I woke up, but 2 hours later I was a bit nauseous again. I felt worse still on the way back to the house where the party was. I don’t ride in cars much, or listen to people talk about cured meats so loudly for so long, and started feeling sick again. I said that out loud and my friend made me promise not to throw up in their house again, which made me laugh, …which made me even more nauseous . He had gotten my camera and my mom’s phone from them the night before, but all of my: money, traveler’s checks, insulin, my credit card, driver’s license, etc. were missing. Some friendly fellow I did not recognize at all had them on a desk upstairs, which saved me a whole world of a different kind of trouble. I got their address from him, and sent them a drawing and a couple of paintings from Japan. I don’t know if they like them at all, I only had older paintings at my parent’s house, but judging by the rest of their decor, they did at least like Japanese things.
I was supposed to visit my friend in New York city that day and spend the night there, but I threw up about 40 more times over the course of the day instead. I drank a cup of tea, then threw up a cup of tea. I took a vitamin b pill my friend assured me would help with hangovers, but I threw that pill up too. It was long long after the party ended, and I never threw up so much or for so long before, so I checked the internet between bouts of it. I didn’t find any useful information, but I did find a web forum for people who throw up for unexpected long periods of time a long time after drinking. I think I may have been throwing up pure bile towards the end. 17 hours after the party ended it finally stopped, but my stomach was unsettled all the rest of that day and the next, and my esophagus burned whenever I ate or drank anything during the 1st 5 days of the year.
I thought of several headings that used the word “tart” in a clever fashion, but I wasn’t comfortable actually using any of them/ food – segment.
Years ago I went to a friend’s wedding and had a bit of a fruit tart for the first time ever. We’ve made a great many at home since then.
I’ll often make the crust and let it sit to cool/ harden before adding the fruit, but in the short time that I’m away, my wife always descends upon it and …alters it.
There are fruit tarts with cream, fruit tarts with more cream, fruit tarts with no cream, and there are crusts so full of cream you can only toss a couple of berries on top. I find the latter wholly disappointing – particularly when I set out cooking on my own – expressly to avoid that outcome.
I’m even tempted to tell her this, …then I remember how angry she got that one time when I asked her to please put less salt on the French fries… so I always end up just eating soy cream on a pie crust and wishing she hadn’t wrecked it.
One week I started making a pie crust immediately after I got home from work, so it would have some time to cool, and I could put lots of fruit inside of it before she came home to meddle with it. I thought that was clever of me, but she came home early that day. It sounds like trouble, I know, but not to worry – I also put soy cream in my tea for the few days prior, so there would just be a little bit left on baking day, and I wouldn’t have to eat copious quantities of it in place of the fruit I’d like to eat. I thought that was particularly clever of me.
I also used all the sugar in the sugar dish when making the crust instead of taking it out of the big bag of sugar. I did this because I am lazy, and also because I knew she wouldn’t want to pull the big bag of sugar out, open it up, and dump her usual amounts of extra sugar in the extra cream to make it extra sweet. I was right.
She dumped salt from the salt dish in the cream instead. That was pretty terrible I tell you! I couldn’t stop her from doing it, but I did manage to stop her from putting it on the crust at least:
“No!!!!! Stop!!!”
“What?”
“Taste that!”
“What?”
“That! Taste that before you put it on the crust!”
“Why?”
“Just taste it!”
“Gueah!”
Then she accused me of switching the sugar and salt container’s locations, a very reassuring thing to hear from a pharmacist who mixes medicines all day. The sugar is always in a green container, the salt in an orange one. It’s also easy to tell them apart by tasting them; the sugar is sweet. The salt tastes like salt.
Then she was upset. It was a mixture of anger and shame, which turns into far more anger further down the line. She drove to the store and bought herself an additional dessert and another container of soy cream while I cooked dinner. It went on too sweet and far too thick with cream again, leaving no room for fruit on the fruit tart again – despite what I think was a very solid effort on my part.
A couple of weeks later I made some soup for dinner. It had a soy milk and chili base, with a brick of this yellow corn thing you can buy for flavoring. I made a mixture of my healthy rice, which is: white rice, brown rice, and unprocessed oatmeal. And I cut up some seaweed paper, so you could put small sheets on top of the rice and eat it bite by bite with your fingers. It took me a little over 2 hours to get it all ready. It was good.
She came home, got a mixing bowl out of the kitchen and filled it half full of rice. Then she put all the seaweed paper in a big pile on top of the rice, and stabbed it in with a knife. It kind of defeats the purpose, but alright… I supposed it would still taste as good that way. Then she pulled a scoop full of soup out of the big pot and held it in the air over the tatami floor. “You want a bowl for the soup?” I asked. She looked at me with vacant eyes, sighed as though I was stupid, and I could never understand the procedure she was performing. Then she began dumping half the pot of soup into her gigantic bowl.
I understand it fine. I just don’t want to believe that – sometimes, I spend a lot of time making pig slop for my wife.
When I went to the US for Christmas, she asked me several times to buy lots of sweets.
I did.
I showed her the stash and explained that that was all the American candy we would get until we went back again. I asked her several times to please eat it responsibly. It was about 5 pounds of candy. I thought we could make it last most of a year.
A third of it was gone in one day!! She even ate a half pound of mint flavored Oreos in one go (and she always says she doesn’t like mint)!! WTF?!
I asked her to make me a vegan chocolate peanut butter cake for my birthday. That was, admittedly, also a long time ago. I write this at work when there is no work, and I left it at work over summer vacation. Then I got hit by a car…
The vegan chocolate peanut butter cake came out better than many of the fruit tarts but not too much better. It was more of a round sweet chocolate peanut butter bread with the top half eaten because that’s another screwy thing she does. She cut the cake into 8 pieces and ate the top halves of 3 of them.
I wasn’t going to get into our pizza making here and now, but she once complained that I wouldn’t give her my precious limited American vegan soy cheese to put on her pizza. I had only refused on the grounds of it being totally unavailable to us in Japan, and completely unsuited to use on pizza, but it’s not like she eats pizza in a manner which would make any difference. She eats pizza the same way she ate the cake (and fruit tarts). She doesn’t take a bite, chew, and swallow like everyone else; She pulls the cheese off and eats it, then she eats any bits of vegetables left on top, then she scrapes the leftover sauce off of the crust with a spoon, and eats the wet white bottom – bear of anything else last. Why she does it? …I wonder after the fact. When she does it, I watch in stunned silence.
For dinner on my birthday we went to the Nepali restaurant that I stop at before cycling pretty much every weekend. She got an “Indian pizza”, which is basically a normal pizza, but it has some sort of curry under the cheese in place of tomato sauce. She ate that like a normal person, maybe because we were out in public. I had the vegetarian curry set, which made me very sleepy afterwards. (It was that, or perhaps my advancing age…) I was too full, sleepy, and old to manage more than a few bites of cake but I saw that all but 3 of the 8 pieces had disappeared (top and bottom) at some point the next day.
I reminded her daily over several months but, ultimately, I didn’t want to leave it to chance. She always says I’m not romantic, but I do at least go shopping for her for holidays. She took me to one store for 5 minutes the day before Christmas last year. (In all fairness it was a small store.) On my birthday this year we stopped right next to the Nepali/ Indian restaurant because she saw a snow-cone grinder there for $6.85, and I was happy to get anything I didn’t get for myself. I’m quite pleased with that though really. I thought I’d use it after going cycling all over all summer, but ultimately I didn’t get much chance to. I wrote about my summer vacation somewhere else – because I forgot all about never finishing this, and explaining how I got hit by a car does seem more important than what’s written here:
Stress
She started studying in September for a test she has coming around March 15th, so she had a super long time to prepare. All the same, any sound any night of the week when her text book is within reach of her is cause for disappointed and accusatory looks. She made he mom argue with me about it, and I had trouble explaining the concept to her. If I open a link to You-Tube and a video makes a sound before I pause it or cut the sound off, however brief soft or incidental that sound may be, she gets upset. I told telling her mom “if a mouse farted in another room, Rie would get mad at me”. Her mom didn’t know what I was talking about.
The book that she studies from is only as big and as thick as a magazine, so I don’t get what all the stress is about, but stress it is. Stress she does,
at anyone, for anything!
She came home from work one night and said it was super cold.
“God it’s cold!” she said.
“I usually have it like this when it’s just me here.” I said.
“So what?!” she said with her sneer.
She has this sneer that might make her look a lot like Elvis if her eyes weren’t also squinted like little slits of focused hate. It’s the face she usually looks at me with.
“I’m just saying that it’s usually cold when it’s just me in the house.”
“Why should I care about you?!”
“Why do you have to be such a bitch about everything?! I’m just saying that it’s cold when I get home.”
“You mean that you’re better than me because you don’t waste the heater gas.” “No I mean that I don’t waste the heater gas when I get home, because I don’t stay in the room that has the heater. Why do you have to take everything I say as an attack on you? I am allowed to talk!”
“You’re such bastard guy!”
” When her family was in the US with us, her sister said the chicken wasn’t that good. Rie told me under her breath that her sister “hated that diner”, and that her sister was such a bitch. But that’s not what she said, not what she meant… She may even be a bitch, I’d grant her that. I wouldn’t know for all the times we never see her. Her worst offense then was assuming diner food was more extravagant than it is, but my wife was muttering and spacey for another 2 hours.
She was at a big company party a month ago. She came home a week after complaining about stress (after eating her 3 pre-dinner snacks).
“What stress?” I said.
She said at the party they had to write their names down and check the appropriate boxes if they were going to be drinking then and/or if they would need a taxi home. One of her coworkers drank and didn’t take a taxi home, but checked the taxi box, not the drinking box. (Imagine that!)
Then she said someone at the main branch told her they should do what they write down on the form next time.
I was looking at something on the internet while listening, waiting for the real story to start, but that’s where it ended. She looked at me accusingly to see if I was listening as intently as I should have been, and said: “What do you think of that?!”
“What do I think of what?” I said.
She got mad and said “I knew you didn’t listen!”
I was minding my own business looking at LOL cat classics, and didn’t know why I suddenly had to play defense now. I repeated her whole “Story” back to her to prove that I did listen, and informed her that I thought they might have make a questionnaire with questions – because they wanted people to answer those questions, and that the drinks surely cost less than a taxi would, so they couldn’t be all that upset about her coworker changing her mind that way
She looked disappointed and I assume it’s because she couldn’t give me a hard
time for not listening. She said she was so stressed out all day because of that. “Because of what? You didn’t check the wrong boxes, and even if you did, why the hell would it matter?”
An Economic analysis of: bicycles, and potato chips.
I make a little over 200,000 yen per month – far from great, but I was still able to send $5,200 home in the mail (last week) – way back when I started writing this in May/ June.
All the kids at the school had tests all day, and I was going to be sitting here all day, maybe writing this. I politely asked the Vice Principle if I couldn’t sneak down to the post office for a bit, and he allowed me to because he thinks highly of me (being that I can speak a little bit of Japanese, I strive for efficiency in all things, and I weed the gardens when I get really bored of sitting inside). The fact that there was absolutely nothing of any importance for me to do here likely also crossed his mind…
I do nearly all of my shopping and financial transactions over the internet, and I routinely entertain the possibility that the U.S. dollar might regain some of its former value one day, so every time my wife mentions that it’s hit a new record low, I try to go out and buy some dollars. The post office is the only place around here I know that you can do that, and they only let you do that between 9 and 3 on regular weekdays, …when I can’t go.
The post office is just 5 minutes down the hill from where I work, so I told the vice principle that I’d be back within 30 – 40 minutes at the most. It’s good he didn’t care, because it took almost 2 hours. I got there in 5 minutes, waited my turn for 5 minutes, then they gave me a form to fill out. After filling out a good part of it, they looked and told me I hadn’t used all block capital letters in the name field, so I had to start over. I started over, but it seems I put an “X” where only a check mark would suffice, so I had to start over again. The next time, I put one of the characters in my address in wrong, but …eventually we got it done. The woman at the counter looked it over, then showed it to her supervisor, who was wandering past. They both approved of my filled in form. I would have been relieved, but then they gave me 7 more to fill in.
That was a pain in the ass!
I suppose I could have just wired the money and saved myself that added trouble, but I wanted to save the $40 extra it would have cost instead.
“The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft a-gley.”, so they say.
I got this batch of forms all finished carefully with no further mistakes of any kind.
Hoorah!
The woman at the counter looked them over approvingly, set them down, and said it was 11:03 now.
“Alright … …..What happens at 11:03?”
Those otherwise kindly bastards change the exchange rate at precisely 11am, they said, so they had to recalculate everything I had already written up.
Damnit, damnit damnit,
damnit, damnit!
An X mark where a check mark should go seems like less of a problem to me honestly, but they made me get a new form for that. Contrarily, they had no problem crossing out the part where I was to have paid them $300 dollars less, and just wrote the new exchange rate and updated figures in a little space along the side.
Damnit!
The only other day I’ve been able to go back was the day after they made me run a 1/3rd marathon. The value of the dollar on that afternoon was one yen higher than it was in the morning. It was higher than it had been the week before, and the rest of the week that followed. If I had stopped there before going to the Indian buffet for lunch, I would be about $460 richer now. It’s not bad luck exactly, it’s just shy of being the best luck possible – by a considerable margin.
It’s just as well I suppose. Last year I threw a whole mess of money into an environmentally and socially responsible mutual fund that had had a very good record, but lost about 30% of its value shortly after; It might pick up again someday, but at least this time I got a decent night’s sleep and some ‘very expensive’ Indian food out of the process.
Money is a medium of exchange – meaning that it is used to facilitate the exchange of goods and services. I have a job that I go to. I serve the needs of the community by keeping my desk warm and slept at, sometimes reading students’ papers, and weeding ( on the rare occasion when I get bored enough). In exchange for my showing up and wearing pants, the town pays my company with money; My company then steals about half that money, and bothers me about things.
Mostly I show up to work out of habit, …and because I don’t want to be yelled at for not going. To a very small degree, there is some desire on my part to acquire funds, but there are few goods or services that I feel I need.
I like to eat potato chips, and I am generally inclined to trade money for potato chips. My wife likes to eat potato chips even more than I do, but she won’t pay for them. I invariably wind up paying a lot more money than I should for what amounts to a very small quantity of potato chips, because my wife eats them all like some sort of potato chip ninja. Then when we go to the store together she give me a hard time about buying things like potato chips because we don’t need them. Nobody needs them. She doesn’t want to pay to get a lot of them, because she’s already eaten a lot of them. Anything more than the amount that she can eat in 10 minutes is too much for her. (It could be a dieting strategy.) Anything less than the amount that she can eat in an hour of continuous chewing is the same to me as throwing money in a well because she’ll eat them all without me. Buying 3 or 4 times the amount that I might want to consume in a week’s time means I’ll have a decent chance to actually eat a little bit of that before that week has past. She thinks that buying that much is a waste of money. I think that earning more money than you need is a waste if you never get to enjoy things like: potato chips.
Maybe I should have said it’s like throwing money in a wood chipper, that simile is more apt. She puts some in her mouth, chews a few times, puts more in her mouth, chews a little more, swallows some, as she chews some, as she adds more, and never pauses this multifold operation to concentrate on swallowing, or chewing, or reaching for more until there is just a baby’s fistful of crumbs remaining in one corner of a considerably larger bag. She does that so I don’t forget the disappointment of thinking “I can has a fud.”, when there’s really just a teasing empty package in the cupboard.
So what else is money good for? After you pay for your rent, water, electricity, gas, and insulin…
Some of it goes through the Indian buffet. It isn’t strictly necessary, but it’s become a quality of life thing for me as I love and never tire of Indian food.
I bought a very nice bike in March (and got hit by a car in August), due in part to the dollar being so weak (and some asshole driving straight into my rear wheel). The prices of durable goods in America are also way lower than they are in Japan, so if there’s anything you had ever even conceived you might ever get any benefit from, now is an opportune time to look into it (this also explains the 3 new pairs of pants I got). I got the road bike because it is awesome, also because my mountain bike doesn’t operate as smoothly as I would like. The chain gets stuck or comes off when I go up big hills, and the brakes only kill some of the speed coming down big hills. Having been hit by a car quite recently, the notion of maybe being able to stop myself coming down a mountain has occurred to me. I use the mountain bike a lot less now that I have the road bike, but I always want to keep the road bike clean, neat, and polished, and I never use it if there’s any chance of rain. Also: the seat on that bike costs as much as my mountain bike. I know that because my usual ‘go everywhere pants’ roughed up the seat cover to a point where that seat now wears holes in my spandex cycling shorts, and I had to e-bay up another seat to ensure my ass skin doesn’t show on a fine cycling day.
It had never before occurred to me, that one of the best bicycles made – bicycles themselves the most efficient way for a person to cover distance, this by result – the very pinnacle of efficiency, could somehow work out to be so terribly impractical! Fun!! But impractical. It needs a lot of adjusting, repairing, and specialized cycling goods to get the most out of it. It wound up being more expensive than driving everywhere (at least during the 1st year, with an accident and various mishaps besides).
So, I got another mountain bike.
I only had 20-30 minutes to pick out the one I’ve been using the past 7 years. The guy that hired me to work in that area dropped me off at a bike store and said he’d be back to pick me up when he was done at the liquor store. I tried to buy a $100 bike, but the guy at the store talked me into getting the $250 bike. Everything else there had a basket on the front, or training wheels, and there was enough of a weight difference between the 2 to make the extra money justifiable (if I happened to remain in the country and not get hit by a car for a few months). He only had one size and one color, and I had to have a way to get to work the next day. It’s dark grey and black, 30 odd pounds, rusted more than a little these days, and it’s always felt too small for someone with unnaturally long legs like me.
My wife wants to have a bike where we live now, but she can’t justify spending more than $100 on one no matter how much it weighs, or how many baskets it doesn’t have. That’s probably a prudent financial decision for her though, as she doesn’t really like physical activity. She won’t be going up or down any mountains, certainly not in the rain at 60k/ 45 miles an hour; I doubt if she’ll ever even get up to 20k, so the brakes on my old bike will do a good enough job for her, given the “speeds” that she travels. I just have to knock the seat down, and wait for the new used one I ordered to arrive.
Perhaps it was a mistake buying a second good bike. I could just drive my car whenever it looks like it might rain, but I know I always insist on riding a bike unless it is raining while I’m leaving. It went like this:
I saw a bike in one of the catalogs the guy at the shop gives me, and mentioned it to my wife. A bike that would weigh less, fit me better, and stop when I need it to seemed like a good idea to me (particularly after the accident), the safety justification did nothing to abate her growing anger. I don’t remember any of the specifics, and I don’t really need to because she didn’t do anything strangely suddenly violent, but hearing of money being spent made her rude, angry, and altogether unpleasant to be around for the better part of a week.
Here are photos of her opening her Christmas presents from me, just so you can see what she’s like when she’s happy:
She’s worn these same pajamas all fall, winter, spring – for the past 2 years.
I waited a little longer because there was no need to rush and because I wondered if an even lighter bike with even better brakes, that cost only a little more money still might not be better. Whatever bike I bought, I would feel compelled to stick with for as many years as I could, so I wanted a bike that I would not feel any need to upgrade. I did take advantage of auction site’s discounted used model prices and foreign market currency fluctuations to get a relatively cheaper price on what I ordered, but I also used those perceived discounts to order a far more expensive model bike than any ordinary person would consider under ordinary circumstances.
Does anyone need a Bullet-Proof/ Bomb-Proof carbon frame. It’s not that I get shot at a lot (so far), but accidents do happen (and they happen to me more than others). A light bike that will go up, down, around smoothly, and can survive for a time is worth a little bit of money I told myself. I did not, however, tell my wife.
The Japanese custom is for the man to come home with an envelope full of his pay, and give it all to his wife for the upkeep of the house and family. She will then decide how much of that money he can use for himself. To hear it told, those men would be better off pinching out some amount for themselves before surrendering the rest to their wives. Their wives often dress like heiresses while they only get something like $100 a month for all their hobbies and socializing.
My wife tried to institute this system on me and my pay.
“The fuck I will!” I said.
She tried to appeal to my respect for societal norms.
“The fuck I will!” I said.
She tried to appeal to me with reason: “The husband always gives all his money to his wife, so you have to do that too.”
“The fuck I will!” I said. “I do all the cooking and cleaning around here, that makes me more of a wife than you! Give me all of your money!” (She didn’t like hearing that, even in jest. I swear she hunched her back up and hissed at me!)
‘”If you keep all your money you’ll just waste it on crap”/ things that I don’t approve of. If I keep all of your money (and allow you a pittance), we’ll be able to buy (me) a house in Saitama some day.’
“The fuck I will!” I said. “I hate Saitama!!”
She didn’t give up all at once. We’d be in the store from time to time and I’d try to buy a paintbrush or underpants or something and she’d say something like: “You can use your own personal money for that if you want to get it.” And I’d say “…The Fuck??! I will! All of my money is my own personal money!”
She’s serious about buying that house in Saitama though. She says that the reason she never has any cash in her wallet, is so she can’t spend it, so she’ll save it, so she can buy a house, + it has to be a house in the same small shitty city she grew up in.
I’m also serious when I say I hate it there.
Cat Man Do
Money is one of the reasons she never let me get a pet. “We can’t afford a pet.” she’d say. I would look at her in shock. I make more money than I need to get by, she makes enough money to keep elephants! But for the 1st year and a half she lived with me, she acted as though paying for a bag of cat food almost monthly would break us. This, of course, was a long way away from a realistic estimate, and now she loves the cat (except when she’s mad at me and takes it out on the cat).
One day in May I was riding my racing bike through the park. I was going slowly, so I could look at all the stray cats that gather along the sides of the path. I was going slowly enough that a little baby kitten followed me for a few paces. It was making little crying sounds, so I stopped to look at it. It hopped /walked over. Then a big fat man who was power walking half-heartedly passed between us, so the kitten diverted, and followed him as best it could, crying still as it did so. I followed the kitten and the fat man very slowly. When I got close enough to it, it gave up the slow chase, and ran over to my bike – still crying. I pet its head and it quieted down. It seemed to like it when I picked it up and pet it some more. I put it down and it ran back and climbed up on my foot. I picked it up, pet it, put it down again, and it ran right back over to me again. I got back on my bike, because I’m the only one who cooks dinner most nights, and I would have to get back and do that if we were going to eat without anyone complaining. The kitten started crying again as I started rolling away, so I stopped again and looked back at it. It ran over and jumped up on my foot again. “Okay then!” I picked it up and put it on my shoulder. It was a good idea I thought. If one cat at home is good, 2 cats at home would be better. I like my cat. I liked this cat. My cat might like a friend, and they had mostly the same colored fur, so you could still wear beige pants, without people noticing cat hairs stuck everywhere.
I thought there might be some problems introducing this cat into my other cat’s territory, but my wife made it easy.
“Eh! What’s this?!”
“Oh this? It’s a cat.”
“I know it’s a cat, why did you bring it here?”
“Well it was cute, and it kept following me, and I like cats and…”
““No! Put it back!”
“But I was worried about him: He’s cute and he kept crying, and his mother didn’t seem to be anywhere around.”
“You can only have one pet! Take it back before …I start to like it.”
“Aww…. ”
“Aww!”
Her mom always lets us take our cat to her house when we go there. She likes our cat well enough, but another cat is a lot more to ask of her (or anyone really). It’s also $120 each night at a kennel for 2 cats (compared to no money for free single cat sitting services).
We were also going to go away for a few days later that week, so keeping the baby cat would be better off postponed for those few days regardless of whether he ultimately stayed with us for a long time or not. All the same, I took it to the bike shop, which is on the way to the park. The guy there said he couldn’t keep a cat either, nor could the woman working in the café next door, who came out to see a foreign man riding a bike with a kitten on his shoulder
I took him back to the open grassy spot where I found him, pet him, and with some measure of reluctance, set him down. He started crying as soon as I did, so I pet his head while he climbed up on my foot again. We spent about 20 minutes repeating this process. I really liked that little guy. I had been listening carefully all that time to see if a mother cat would answer his cries. None did. All I heard were large owls, which worried me more than a little, because he was quite little.
I went back the next day with a handful of cat food in my pocket, but didn’t see any sign of him. Hopefully somebody else took him home. Maybe that fat man who wasn’t really power walking had a change of heart and carried him away before I got back there. I went back 2 days later, 4 and 5 days later, and many many many other times over the following 7 months hoping to see sign of him. I found several other older cats begging, and a dog that was sadly too old, too big, and too slow to appeal to my wife enough to even get it in the door, but no friendly cute kitten. The best I can say is that I never found picked over remains, or furry owl droppings in any part of the park that I go cycling through. It’s not completely reassuring though, particularly in light of the fact that the number of cats dropped sharply and abruptly one week not long after. The town culls the population from time to time I assume..
I couldn’t read the notice they sent us, but my wife said it said that “if you have a cat, be sure to put a collar on it to avoid any problems”. I believe this is meant to infer to people that – wild cats will be collected and killed, without putting it in such messy terms
Whatever they did to reduce the cat population in the park, they haven’t done nearer my house. I gradually came to have another, 3 more, 4 more cats outside. A grey cat with black stripes came and looked in through my glass door a few times, so I put a little bit of food outside for it. Then the next day, then the next day, then 2 kittens appeared in my garden a few weeks later. They have gradually become less wary of me. One will even tolerate being touched if there is food at hand, but they’re both far too skittish to make good pets. The grey one would make a great pet, but she’s their mother and needed outside with them. I heard her meowing one evening and went out to give her/ them some food, but there was a totally different cat sitting there waiting for it. It’s one of the loudest meanest cats I’ve ever met, but it’s also very handsome, very small, and much too boney to be in a good state for winter, so I feed it as well as the others. I mean that I try to feed them all. It isn’t easily accomplished though. It’s usually the grey cat or the bolder kitten that come crying outside of our glass garden door, so I set some food out. As soon as I open the door, the handsome boney mean cat comes flying over the fence and runs right over to the food, eating from the opposite corner of the dish to keep the other cats from getting any. I sometimes spin the dish around, or move it, so that the other cats can eat too, but they only get a bite that way before he blocks it again. And if I sit there and watch them, the shyest kitten won’t come anywhere near/ won’t eat until I go back in. Putting more than one dish of food out doesn’t help matters any, because the mean cat will always run over and block any dish that any other cat is eating from. The only exception to this rule is my own cat, who sometimes jumps up my back over my head and tries to rush in to eat their food after he’s finished his own. He’s not as mean as the mean cat, he just likes food more than anything else in the world, and only has a passing interest in the other cats when he’s sure that all their food is totally gone.
Since I got back from my trip home for Christmas, I haven’t seen any of these other cats. In the meantime, my cat has come to be a much bigger pain in the butt. He learned how to open the lid on the garbage can, by pressing the right spot with his paws. If we don’t keep something heavy on the garbage can lid (typically a very large jug of plum wine), my cat will paw around for the spring release button and climb inside the can. Sometimes he just sits in there and jumps out at you when you get near to throw something away. Sometimes he digs around for a prize he can run around the house with. He’s run off with the long root ends of old turnips, and other things he can’ even eat. Once he clawed up the bag lining the can and garbage fell out the holes when I took it out for disposal.
It’s been 4 or 5 months now that he’s had a habit of trying to get into anything made with any quantity of: oil, grease, or vegan butter substitute. He doesn’t eat these things so much as he smacks them with his paws and takes a chew or two. One Friday I bought a bag of potato chips. (If I buy them on a Friday afternoon, I can have a few before I go to my “Japanese class”, and eat a few more Saturday if my wife hasn’t noticed them by then.) I opened them, and left the bag on the counter for a second. When I came back into the kitchen moments later, I saw a potato chip bag on a cat’s body. I made a noise to startle it, the cat made a noise indicating it was startled, then it ran, potato chip bag head 1st, into the dish rack. I was laughing, but I couldn’t allow it to continue, or his fur would be all greasy, and the potato chips would be crushed, eaten, and covered with fur. I grabbed the cat and removed the bag of potato chips from its head. He looked up at me, alarmed, with potato chips sticking out of his mouth and ran off as I laughed some more. My cat is a little fat comedian. He’s a fuzzy ball of trouble.
His hair gets everywhere too. Sometimes you don’t notice it, but when the sun sets, and the last rays of sun come streaming in through the windows, then all the dust and hair that collects in the house look really bad.
I washed all the wooden floors for the 1st time in a long time, and made some soup with fried tofu for dinner one night. It was January then, and my kitchen only ever gets up to about 5 degrees Celsius in the winter. (The internet says that’s 41 degrees Fahrenheit, so we don’t really have to refrigerate anything we don’t want to. Tofu is absolutely safe even if you don’t keep it cold for a few days.) The next morning I came downstairs to find soup all over the floor. I suppose he could smell the oil the tofu was fried in, in the water, in the pot, so he knocked the pot off the stove top to inspect it, and dented it.
This week he knocked over a big full bottle of vegetable oil, and chewed the top open. I woke up, staggered downstairs, and found a puddle of oil on the stovetop that came to the top of my fingernail when I poked my little finger in it. I covered it up with the last of the old newspapers we had at home, and spent an hour and a half cleaning when I got home. Now I have a garbage can absolutely full of oily newspapers and cocktail napkins. I’ll have to get rid of it all before my wife moves out; I’m sure she has a lot of stuff to throw out before she goes.
I dance in my underpants
A year and a half ago, I moved here from my old shack on the seashore down in Kagoshima. I had told all my friends down there that I would come and visit them last summer. I wanted to. They’re good people after all!
This formula expresses how I decided not to go:
<value of seeing friends x time I’m likely to actually see them (the value of each unit of time decreases as units of time increase) – severity of hangover(s)> + <good times swimming – estimated frequency of jellyfish incidents (jellyfish numbers increase substantially as summer wears on)> + <settling unfinished business (= 0)> is less than/ does not equal.
<high probability of rain ÷ fulfilling indoor activities in incidences of rain (= 0)> x
cost of transportation (= <bus x 4> + <summer plane fare x 2> + time and opportunity costs) x <likelihood of finding anything to eat with no kitchen in a town with one restaurant (which is only open lunchtime and had very few vegan dishes)>
I like swimming on the old beach there, but I did it for hours and hours almost every day I lived there, so, I delayed my trip there by two months and only took one trip back for my friend’s wedding in September.
I sat down on the plane next to my wife and started looking at the pictures in the magazines they keep in the back of the seat. She casually reached a hand over, pulled my shirt up, looked down my waistband, and said something unusual about shaving and pubic hair that I did not expect.
Strange! Is it not?!
I thought it was another good opportunity to encourage her.
“You didn’t shave there?” – she said, expectantly.
“I’ve done it before. It’s itchy at first, but then it really feels quite nice. It’s a lot of maintenance though, but you ought to do it!”
“I told you – you have to carry the shrine.”
“Alright. What does that have to do with pubes?”
“You have to shave.”
“How are they related?”
“You have to wear fundoshi.”
“What’s fundoshi?”
“Panties.”
“I don’t think you mean panties.”
“Traditional Japanese panties for men.”
“I don’t think you want to say panties. Men don’t wear panties. Do you mean those white things the old men in pictures tie around them?”
“Uh. Fundoshi. Takka called me and told me to tell you to shave or all of the wedding guests will see your hairs sticking out.”
“You didn’t want to tell me that before we got on the plane huh?”
“It’s too late now!”
“Yes! It is! You never told me anything about wearing those weird old man underpants either! You just said I would help them carry the shrine!”
“You always use fundoshi when you carry mikoshi.”
“No you don’t.”
“Usually.”
“No.”
“Well he has fundoshi for you.”
“….I love that guy!”
“Everyone will see your hair.”
“It doesn’t matter. I have too much hair to leave just one spot bald.”
We stopped at the Indian restaurant near Kagoshima airport so I could eat before going south where there is no food for me. Takka called many times to check our progress, because he had decided that we would be doing all of our shrine carrying team practice that night before the wedding. It’s just as well we were as late as we were though, because they were just finished making the shrine when we got there.
Typical! I love those guys!
They put me in the rear left corner of the shrine, because the finger on my left hand was still broken from the accident; I could use my right hand, and watch the guy in front of me to gage when the lift or shake the thing. We only “practiced” for 5 minutes and it didn’t really seem to matter at all. Then we tried to get into the only bar in town, …but couldn’t, so we drove to a sedate chain restaurant in the next town and had a bunch of whiskey and French fries. Then we went to some karaoke place I had driven past many many times. It was all you could drink, so I drank as much as I could, but I changed into my fundoshi and danced around like an Indian first. Jack chose some long song from the 80s to sing and explained that we would have to sing it tomorrow at the wedding party in front of everyone in our funny Japanese underpants. Actually he just said Takka and them had chosen it for the wedding and he didn’t know why, and the realization that we would all have to sing it together in our funny underpants in a room full of mirrors and important well dressed people came to me as the microphones came out and the song started to play.
“What?! We’re singing this? I can’t sing “My Sharona”! I don’t know the words!”
Jack assuringly said: “Neither do they!
(I don’t know if he meant the guests, or the three hairless Japanese guys who built the shrine and chose the song.” It was uncomfortable fun for everyone there though I’m sure.)
You should never choose a song with a 2 minute interlude to sing when you are loose and nearly naked in a crowded formal setting. 20/30 seconds into the interlude they grabbed a bottle of sake and passed it around so that we could get drunker, and not just stand around awkwardly with naught but our crotches and ass cracks covered by a loose piece of hanging cloth, while waiting for the song to continue. I danced around like a Maasai all the same; The beat was good for that at least.
I’ve been to a handful of Japanese weddings now. This one didn’t have the best dessert bar like Izumi’s did, but it was easily the most fun. Those drunk bastards in Kagoshima are great. They were nervous about bursting into the room the way we did, which I didn’t really understand, but they are Japanese, they have ties and responsibilities, and they wouldn’t be leaving there the next day. The tequila helped a lot I think. Tequila always does from time to time. The staff at the reception hall asked if there was anything we needed when we went to get changed, so Takka said tequila. They added seltzer to it, or something bubbly, which somehow made it work so so so much faster and stronger than the stuff I threw up in New Jersey over Christmas long after. The girl who brought our man sized glasses of tequila only giggled a little when she saw us in the lobby nearly nude, and for my part …very hairy (the best part of the joke and probably a great comfort to Jack who is only mildy hairy)
It was awesome/ The most fun I had that whole year. Neither the bride nor groom had any idea what was coming! Neither did Takka. Jack likes to play pranks on Takka and said I should douse his dessert in soy sauce. I called for wasabi, and covered it in that instead. Takka was on his second bite and not looking too pleased with it before he noticed Jack laughing and knew something was up. Jack ate the rest of it to be fair.
Afterwards we went to an onsen. They bought beer there, but drank it before getting into the tub. Takka and Katsushi were looking at my dick to see how foreign people measured up. I thought that was the gayest thing ever. Then they had swim races.
After that, we went to the after party, which was less fun than the supposedly more reserved 1st party. The open bar only had a few kinds of drinks, and the buffet had no food I could eat at all. Thankfully, my wife got some pieces of pizza and ate all the cheese and stuff off of the top of them (which usually bothers me), and I had some pizza crusts at least.
We went to the Indian restaurant in Kanoya that always made me so sick when I lived there, but it didn’t this time. I told the guy there that I didn’t come anymore because I moved to Yamanashi, so he gave me a note to give to a guy at an Indian restaurant in Yamanashi. Takka fell asleep in the car before we could get to the 3rd party, but we didn’t stay very long because it was like 10:30pm, and we had been drinking since 11am – sufficient for all those involved.
I was sad to go back home, because those guys down there are a lot of fun!
A Long walk
The last time that my wife went to the Indian restaurant with me was pretty weird. I’m glad it wasn’t crowded (only 2 other tables of people), because it was embarrassing. They gave us a table with 4 seats – two of them facing the TV. She immediately sat down in one, I sat down in the other. She looked at me – surprised and mildly angry. “What?” I said.
“Sit over there.” She said authoritatively, pointing to the seat on the opposite side of her.
“Why?” I said.
“Because I’m sitting here.” She informed me.
“You’re sitting there.” I point to the seat next to me. “I’m sitting here.” I point down at my seat.
“Sit over there.” she said again, less authoritatively.
“Why?” I repeated.
“Because I’m sitting here.” She whined.
“You can sit there.” I said assuringly. “I won’t bother you.”
“You are bothering me!”
“How am I bothering you? …I’m sitting in one seat, you’re sitting in another. Why do I have to sit on the other side of the table? There’s plenty of room here!” – and there was.
“I don’t want to sit on the same side of the table as you. I want you to sit over there?”
“Why?! Why don’t you sit there?”
“Because I’m sitting here.” She explained again.
“Alright, well, I’m sitting here.”
Then she screamed, like when you’re playing golf and you yell “Fore”, but it wasn’t “Fore” that she was yelling, it was louder and angrier and it was: “Fuck you – you Fucking Bastard! Fuck you! Fuck You!!! Fuck you Bastard!! …Fucking Bastard!!!!”
And what few people were in there with us were all looking to see if I had: torn her fingernails out with pliers, showed her photos of me + her mom + sister having sex, shooting a beloved pet full of rat poison, or whatever else might elicit such a dramatic response to sitting in one of four equally vacant chairs.
That was embarrassing.
And I couldn’t go walking around the restaurant explaining to everyone there that she has psychological/ emotional control problems. “Good afternoon everyone! All I did was sit in the chair next to her. She’s crazy. I wish they’d put out some papad here once in a while.”
Doing that would make it worse …somehow.
I like to have a reason to do things, and she wasn’t giving me one. “Why do you want me to go over there?” “Because I want you to.” I guess I wouldn’t make a good soldier. Contrarily, nobody made her commanding officer.
If I had gone to the other side of the table, she would have stared at the TV and ignored me completely until all the food was gone and the shop was closing. If there’s a TV anywhere we go, she ignores me completely, no matter what is shown on the TV. When there isn’t a TV, she messages people with her phone and shows no signs of awareness of my presence, so I may as well be able to look at the weird Indian movies where people break into dance all the time too.
I waited to make sure she wouldn’t start throwing stuff, then got a tray full of food from the buffet. She sat for 10-15 minutes eating plain Nan – eating it as though it had done her wrong and it deserved a good chewing. Then she went and got: 2 curries, salad, pasta, French fries, more of all of them, then several yogurts. She typed in her phone for the whole hour and 45 minutes we were there, ignoring me completely, except at the very end when she laughed and gloated – telling me that there was cheese in one of the curries I had eaten, and that I couldn’t be a real vegan anymore. I don’t know who made her the authority on the subject. I believe she was lying about the cheese anyway.
When I got up to get more seaweed salad, my friend whom I talk to there each week, asked what I had done to make her so angry. The chefs in the back were still peering out oft and again to see what was wrong/ see if anything else would be happening. “I don’t know man. All I did was sit in the seat next to her. …I think some women are just fucking crazy.” was what I said. He didn’t seem to believe that.
When we got back in the car she was talking to me again. She said she wanted to go to the new mall next door. Shopping without buying anything makes her happy, so I figured there’d be no harm in agreeing to that, but inside the mall I remembered that my sister’s birthday was coming. I’m going to look for some tea for my sister’s birthday in here I said. She came in with me. I explained that my sister said she loved the green tea with berries I got her a few years before, and that she wanted more, but my wife walked away as I was talking. Probably getting a free sample, I thought. I looked for the green tea with the berries that my sister said she liked. I didn’t see it, but I found 3 kinds that were similar. Put together in a package with something else I might find, it would make for a good gift. My sister sends a package to me for most birthdays and most every Christmas. I live in an area that has stores now too, so I was able to do it this year.
The tea shop is small. It’s just 2 desk sized counters, both waist high, with some more tea around on the walls. My wife was not in there. I looked around another 5 minutes, thinking she would reappear, and I could show her the teas. I tried calling her. I waited around another short while, paid, waited more – probably 20 -25 minutes of standing around looking for my wife. I looked in the dessert section of the supermarket next door; An hour and a half at an Indian buffet would slow most other people down, but she would certainly want more food the instant she could fit it in her. I didn’t see her there + didn’t want to check the whole mall, so I called her again. There was no answer. I called again. There was no answer. I went upstairs to look at the very small men’s sports section. I like sports clothes. They are colorful. Maybe 10 minutes after my last call, she called me back.
“Where are you?” I said
“I’m by the tea shop.” she said.
“I was in the tea shop for 40 minutes and you were not there.”
“That’s where I am.”
“Well, stay there. I’ll be right there.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m upstairs right by the tea shop, I’ll be there in a second.”
She hung up. 120 seconds later I was back at the tea shop. She was nowhere to be found. I called 3 or 4 more times. No answer.
I went to the really cheap clothes store at the opposite side of the mall. She called me back, but hung up when I answered. I called her back 3 more times, and she answered the 3rd time.
“Where are you?” she said.
“I’m heading to the tea shop again. Please meet me there.”
“Okay” <in Japanese>.
So I went, waited around there for 5 more minutes, like a sucker, and left.
The Indian place we went to, and the mall both are 15 minutes away (by racing bike). That translates to about 45/50 minutes of a walk/jog back home.
I thought I’d jog most of the way back, to prepare for the school marathon they hadn’t asked me to run in yet. I actually jogged around a 12th part of the way.
My legs look like they’re all set for any sort of physical activity, but for all the cycling I do, I rarely ever even walk anywhere, and I never run. Last year I did the school’s marathon, because they had nothing else for me to do, and asked me if I could about a week beforehand. I got 169th place then.
This year, I realized how weak I was while walking back from the mall, so I resolved to try and jog a little in the next 2 weeks, to prepare a little better.
Another long Walk
Sure enough, the day before the marathon, I was having the vice principle check my weekly time sheet, and he “asked” me to run in the marathon. I put the word “asked” in quotations because it translates closer to: ‘Ryan, tomorrow is the marathon, …I hope it goes well for you.’
It went well enough. I thought I walked more than I did the year before, but I placed 143rd out of a larger field of competitors – probably an improvement, because I can’t remember either of my times. The girl I finished right behind last year, beat me by 3 people this year. I have no concept of distance, so I never know how I should expend my energy until it’s too late, or until I can see the finish line, …at which point it is always much too late.
There’s a nice kid at school that tries to talk to me all the time. I like him because he is so friendly, and because he asks me about my bike. More people should do that. I have 2 cool bikes now, but no one else to feign interest.
He and a few others were standing near me when the race started, so he thought he should run alongside me. I can’t run fast for very long, but I used to be able to sprint and recover well. He was a very friendly kid, who stuck by me for the 1st third of the course (a third of a full marathon). I have long legs, I go too fast at the start, and I don’t see racing as a team activity, so I wore him out far too quickly.
I don’t like marathons. I think it’s all the running.
The Spaghetti Incident!
One night I went shopping with my wife and she seemed like she was in a good mood, but I guess she wasn’t because we did buy some food and things, and using money always upsets her somewhat. I had just given her the money for my ticket to Kagoshima a few days before, and I had forgotten to replenish the cash I keep, so she had to pay most of it too, which couldn’t have helped, but she seemed calm.
When we got home I started putting things in the fridge while she tried to turn the heater on. It wasn’t that cold, but she doesn’t mind blowing money on fuel for heat. She’ll pay for that and the cost of many desserts, but not much else. I bought more kerosene while we were out, so she took it outside to fill up the tank in the heater. She does it, because she uses most of it, and more importantly, because I spill it everywhere most every time I try. She asked me where the pump was. “It’s against the wall next to the air conditioner fan.” She opened the door again a few seconds later. “I don’t see it.” “You know where the air conditioner fan is?” “Uh.” “ It’s between that and the wall.” A few more seconds passed. “I can’t find it.”
The space between the air conditioner fan and the wall is only 2 foot square, and the pump is a foot and a half long; I don’t know what the problem was. I went outside and had it in my hand in all the time it takes to take 3 steps and bend down once. “Look what I found!” I said, and I don’t think I said it terribly condescendingly. “Where was it?” she said. “Exactly where I told you it was.”
She started putting things under the sink but stopped suddenly. “Why are there 2 packages of spaghetti open?”
“There are? I didn’t know.”
Then louder and more forcefully: “Why are there 2 packages of spaghetti open?!”
“I didn’t know there was one already open!” – And I was perplexed. Why the hell should anyone care if there are 2 packages of spaghetti open? It’s not like spaghetti goes stale, or gets any harder after you open it, and I sealed up the bag anyway.
Then she started yelling: “So why are the placemats under here?!!!!”
Holy shit if that isn’t even crazier! “How the hell should I know! Your fucking mom probably put them there!”
“You are such fucking bastard that I ever met!!!” She screamed and grabbed the new bag of potato chips on the counter and went into the room with the TV.
15 minutes later she stormed back in and dropped the empty bag back on the counter.
“How the hell do you eat an entire bag of potato chips in 15 minutes!?” I lamented.
“I bought them! I can do what I want! Fucking Bastard!! She shouted that last part for emphasis.”
“Well I bought the kerosene, so I can use the heater in here!” I shouted back.
“I paid for this house, so you get out!!! I want you out!!” she yelled.
It’s an old evil trick that she repeats much too often. She doesn’t pay for the house, we both do. I couldn’t sign the contract because I’m not Japanese, and she knows I could only get a very expensive and very dirty bad place to live if I tried to go out on my own. It would take a lot of time too. I could go back to America and live jobless with no health insurance with my parents for a few years too if it didn’t seem like a very bad idea, so in the short term it always seems better to stay there with her. The crazy bitch!
She watched the TV as loudly as she comfortably could staring at it with dead eyes and laughing like a (crazy) machine while trying to eat everything we had recently bought as rhythmically as she could. I made myself something for dinner that wasn’t junk food, and played on the internet quietly. WTF?
She was doing the same thing when I got up the next day, but she left the room when I came in. I heard her go upstairs and make a lot of noise in the room I paint in, so I played around on my computer as long as I could while waiting for her to leave. I had to finish 2 paintings and give them enough time to dry so I could take them back with me over Christmas. My broken finger had caused some delay. Going to Saitama 2 times and having her mother come here (and rearrange everything) another weekend had cut out more time. It just wouldn’t do to put it off any longer.
I knocked on the door and she ignored me, so I opened it and explained that I needed to use the room to finish my paintings.
“I’m studying.” she said.
“Why don’t you do that downstairs + you can use the kotatsu (heated table)?” I offered helpfully.
“Go away! You’re bothering me! I have to study.”
She was sitting on the floor with one book, a notebook, a pen and a small electric dictionary on a little table. She looked cold. We have a kitchen table with chairs, and a heated table next to a heater downstairs. It would have taken her one trip downstairs to relocate those few small things, but she expected me to carry all my: bottles of thinner, varnish, oil, cleaner, drop clothes, brushes, canvases, easels, paints and paints and paints and spend a few hours getting it all set up in another location – somehow not getting it all over the furniture.
I set up one of the easels she had moved when she had brought that little table in. It cast a slight shadow over one empty portion of the table. “Get out of here!!!” she yelled. I explained again that I needed to paint there, and why it had to be there:
it contains the mess to one area,
it has the best light,
and it would take at least 2 hours to move everything.
She was only studying in the art room, because she wanted to be away from me. I didn’t particularly mind her being in that room with me, but I wasn’t going to waste 2 hours and ruin things in other rooms just because she wanted to be bitchy about 2 packages of spaghetti being open.
“Get out!!” she yelled again. “You get out! I need to be here! You can study anywhere!” I replied (understandably tersely). She pushed her back against the wall and pushed the table surprisingly hard into my shin. It bled a little, but hurt a lot more. One of the aluminum legs of my easel also got bent.
“I don’t want to live with you!!!” She yelled. “I don’t want to live with you either!” I said back. “Get out of my house!!!” she yelled once again. “You get out!” I yelled. (I’m really tired of this bullshit!) She threw her book at me, so I kicked it back at her. She jumped up surprisingly fast and flipped the table over at me with her hands as she did so. The edge banged into my shin again hard enough to hurt for a week and one of the legs broke off of it when it hit the floor. She started wailing! “How am I supposed to study now!!!!!!!!?!! (deep sucking breath)… You bastard!!” I called after her again as she ran down the stairs that she could study anywhere in the house, but I needed to paint there. She grabbed a big mug sized candle off the windowsill going down the stairs and tried to throw it at my head. It hit a window instead. Nothing got damaged, but I found that last part as unsettling as all the rest of it was. Why the hell would anyone do that?
I wasn’t in any hurry to go back downstairs, but I do believe I ought to be free to move around my own house. After 2 and a half hours painting, I had to pee besides.
I stopped in the kitchen and washed my plate from lunch and the thermos that I keep tea in. She heard the water running, and called out that I must not have needed to paint so badly if I was washing dishes in the kitchen after only 2 hours. I called back that if she knew anything at all about painting, she would realize that they look better when you take a break now and again for a fresh perspective. She muttered something nasty in Japanese. I poked my head in, thinking I would give the internet a minute, and see how it was doing. She was studying at the kotatsu which we both know is a far better place to sit and study. We also know that computers are expensive and delicate instruments; That god damned psycho bitch had done something to mine. I had left it turned on on top of the table, but found it all black, upside down with the lid partly closed at the base of the couch. When she’s upset, she tries to make everyone else even more upset. I never even understand how she gets so upset. It’s not like I assaulted her …repeatedly, then tried to punish her by ruining her most precious and expensive possession. I asked her what she had done to it/ why it was on the other side of the room, and she ignored me. I asked again and she ignored me harder. You can’t throw a guys computer around like a baseball and just ignore him afterwards, not even if you are mentally deranged. I still had the rag I use to clean the kitchen counter in my hand, so I held it up and dribbled 5 drops of water on her head. She’s like a cat with water. Hates it! That broke the silence, but it didn’t answer my question. Ultimately my question never got answered (not that there was any real question about it). She yelled a whole lot more – still upset that I wanted to use the room she had been less comfortable in but made no mention of all the painful damaging things she did.
When I got hungry that night I cooked my own dinner with half the ingredients we had bought at the store the day before. I cook 4 or 5 times a week, and she is supposed to take a turn herself 2 other days, but she won’t do it when she’s mad; She’ll just eat through everything in the fridge herself, in its raw form.
The days when she’s angry (few though they are) definitely seem to correlate with the days when she is supposed to take a turn to cook. I don’t see why I need to waste my free time cooking for the benefit of someone who has absolutely no regard for me and my right to exist, my possessions, or the principles of fairness, so I took some instant ramen to work for lunch the next few days, prepared to wait her out instead. I don’t know what she had for lunch the next 2 days, but I do know she had eaten mostly everything else in the fridge the night before. On the 3rd day, I was in the kitchen heating up the last of my leftovers from the 1st night when she got home. I said hello, and she ignored me for 15 or 20 minutes. Then she came in and asked what was for dinner, so I said “It’s whatever you’re making.” She dropped a bag of groceries on the counter smugly, to show she was prepared for that. I could, maybe, have cared less, She filled up a big pot of water, and put it on the burner as she started cooking spaghetti for herself. She asked if I was going to apologize. “What would I be apologizing for?” I said.
Her angry level increased markedly. So I felt I needed to justify my question:
“Why would I be apologizing? I didn’t throw a table and a candle at you. I didn’t break your easel! I didn’t throw your computer! And I already said I didn’t know there were 2 packages of spaghetti open.”
“You didn’t let me study, and you put water on my head! You are such a fucking bastard guy! That’s the worst thing that anybody’s ever done to me in my whole life!”
I laughed honestly and said “Well you’ve had a nice sheltered life haven’t you?”
She laughed maniacally, like a crazed rabid hyena, scooped some water out of a bowl in the sink with her hand and tossed it at me many many times. “You like that? This is what you like?” I have bigger hands and better control, so 20/ 30 seconds into it I did it back to her once. She filled the sponge up with cold water from the tap and threw it at me, then tried to empty a big bowl of old cold dirty water from the sink on me, but I grabbed her arm and pried it out of her hand. She hit me when I was turned around, so I threw the sponge back, an affront to her personhood she just couldn’t stand. She came at me punching overhand with both hands. (Mostly she hit the tops of my shoulders, the collarbones in the front of my chest, and the top of my head, near my forehead.) I grabbed one of her arms above the elbow and squeezed it tight against her waist so she would get to think that I wasn’t going to let her hit me anymore.
There was no such realization in her. Instead she grabbed the big: half a 9 pound bag of spaghetti), and tried to hit me in the face with it. She swung it repeatedly, like a ball and chain, still punching with her other arm. She hit the side of my head a few times with each as I tried to pin her arms down, but holding her right arm above the elbow still allowed her to continue to whack me in the head with a giant heavy plastic bag full of pasta. I grabbed her by the neck to make her stop and she took a couple more swings from both sides before resting. She yelled “What are going to do? Kill me now?”
WTF!!!!??, I thought.
“I’m not going to kill you.” I said. “….. How did you get to be so Goddamn Crazy?!!” as I let her go.
She threw the spaghetti into the sink (again, surprisingly hard) and stormed past me towards the stovetop. I thought she’d either go for the knife on the edge of the sink next, or she’d start throwing dishes at me. …you know, something else seriously crazy.
I got the crazy part correct at least!
She grabbed the large pot of water, which was just beginning to boil, off of the stove top and tried to throw it on me. I ran those few steps across the wet floor, grabbed her hands with mine and forced it back down almost in time.
That is why I am not horribly scarred right now.
Some of it still managed to splash out under the lid and burn my right hand, again, quite painfully. She was yelling in pain for a minute from that too, which doesn’t seem fair to me, as my hands unwittingly protected hers from the worst of the very hot water, and it was entirely her own fault it happened besides that. My hand was all red and white, my dinner was soggy from the water thrown around, and my wife is a fucking nutcase who should be locked up and medicated with really strong potent drugs, and never released!
…but still I lived with this woman.
I called her mother while she was clutching her hand in pain, said:
“Hello, Happy Birthday …yeah …that’s nice but , I can’t listen to all that right now. Your daughter threw a table at me yesterday, broke my easel, threw my computer across the room, threw something at my head, she keeps punching me, and she tried to throw hot water on me just now.” (I don’t know the word for “boiling” hot water in Japanese, so I just left it as hot water, which honestly doesn’t convey the same sense of serious urgent danger her daughter now posed to me.) She had never told me that her daughter was bat shit insane, but she must know this. She didn’t sound surprised at all.
She said she would call her daughter in a few minutes. I ran my hand under some cold water, and went and ate my wet vegan pizza and lukewarm leftovers in the other room – half listening to the Daily Show streaming on my still functioning computer, half listening to my wife screaming and bawling on the phone. After 15/ 20 minutes my wife abruptly stopped crying, came in, sat on the couch and put the TV up to full volume. I know she was trying to tempt me into a sound war (like the time I finally got my hands on a copy of the Green Lantern movie I had been telling her I wanted to see for the full year and a half preceding it, and she chose that precise moment to decide she wanted to watch the shopping channel on TV instead), so I just put my noise canceling headphones on and played a computer game that didn’t require much attention; Best to remain alert in case she started any other crap.
Around an hour and a half later, she went back to studying quietly; It took her that much time to finish eating everything with any amount of sugar or salt that remained in the house. She was very through, as always.
I didn’t like this situation, and I wanted to leave but, in the short term, my only option is to go stay in a hotel. Doing that would be marginally less dangerous for my person, but far more dangerous for anything I didn’t take to a hotel with me, …expensive and inconvenient besides. Who knows what she might do to my cat if she was angry and I was not around? I also have paintings she could put her angry little fists through, and a racing bike I don’t want stuck under her car.
The next night she waited until 12:30am to begin pulling all of my art supplies out of the room that I paint in, dragging them loudly into the bedroom, and throwing them in a pile against the wall to the apartment next door. She ruined 2 of my new canvases this way, and accepts no responsibility for this. She then dragged her mattress, clothes and a couple of books into the room she had cleared out. “You know, …this is stupid for so many reasons.” I started to say, but I stopped myself because I don’t want to get stabbed.
3 days after that she wanted to put everything back the way it had been. I don’t know why the hell she wanted her bed in the other room, why nothing of mine could be in that room with her bed, why she changed her mind about all of it, or why the fuck I helped clean up her mess. Small sacrifices for just a little peace I suppose.
Actually these past 2 weeks have been particularly nice for me because she got really mad again (but not quite that stabbing violent mad) and refused to speak to me.
Here’s why:
1 Light, 2 Tires, and 3 Balls (plus more walking)
I took a short cut through a parking lot on my racing bike one evening. I was starting to feel proud of myself for avoiding a large puddle at the last second, but then I hit a curb I couldn’t see, and went down to meet the asphalt. I got double flat tires from that! As my luck would have it, I was on the opposite corner from a bike shop where I could have had the repairs done quickly,
…but it was closed that day.
I had to walk 45 minutes down the busy main road in my ‘hard to walk in bike shoes’, to get to a sports shop that could put new tires and tubes on my bike. The guy there had never done it before. He was pulling, and straining, and sweating worse than I do when riding the bike. It took more than an hour and around $60 to fix, so I decided I should get a better brighter bike light to prevent further occurrences of this nature. The ones they sold at the store cost $27. I found one on the internet that night for $12. The only problem was that I needed to use my wife’s password to get the information I needed to pay, but she didn’t want to give me the password. She’s tired of helping me do things – like type in a password once every year and a half. Rather than spend 3 or 4 second’s time telling me what the password is, she spent more than 2 and a half hours yelling and accusing me of all manner of ill deeds, such as:
not cooking when I get home late + bleeding,
buying new bike tires (when I’ve torn holes in my old ones),
not buying her the Christmas present she decided she wanted after she’d already asked for a different one,
etc.
I’d say that her complaining was less than successful. She must have felt the same way because she called her mom for help in giving me a hard time. Somehow I wound up talking to her mom on the phone upstairs while using a hot glue gun to repair the table she broke (when she threw it at me), while she watched TV with her 3rd and 4th desserts of the evening. I also love how this whole outburst occurred, conveniently, after I had spent 2 hours and a half hours cooking dinner for her. I don’t need this bullshit! I went back downstairs, she snatched her phone back and hung up on her mother. She started up again about how she didn’t want me to live there with her. I have nowhere else I can go, and she cherishes this power that she thinks she has over me. Maybe she could even force me out. I don’t know. She “doesn’t like guys who only get paid what I do”. She “hates guys who play video games” even though she was the one who suggested we get a Wii. She “can’t be with someone who doesn’t want to save all his money to buy a house in the same crappy town as her mom”, though it was stated many times in the clearest terms possible that I will never want to go back there. It was when she started complaining about how I got her the expensive designer wallet she asked for, before she changed her mind and wanted a different designer wallet that I gave up listening. I got 2 pairs of socks and 2 undershirts costing maybe $6, who is she to complain? (I doubt I would have even gotten the socks if they didn’t come free with the clothes she bought herself.) Then she said that while I was in America over Christmas she “did some bad things she regretted”, but she wouldn’t say what those things she had such an oddly happy- smug look from remembering were. I don’t need that bullshit either!
These chat sessions with the nice man whose house I threw up all over on New Year’s were far more worthwhile than communicating further with my extremely problematic wife、who preferred to redial her mom again anyway.
Never tell your password to anyone.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
10:58 PM – “Good-Man”: you are awesome ryan
10:58 PM – “Good-Man”: thank you! (I had translated something for him)
11:09 PM – “the puker”: Holy Fuck don’t EVER get married man! That was no problem though anyway, an interesting intellectual I forget the word, I could think of it probably if my wife wasn’t screaming at her mom on the phone.
11:10 PM – “Good-Man”: lol everything ok?
11:11 PM – “the puker”: She isn’t trying to throw boiling hot water on me again, but yeah, nothing out of the ordinary I’m sorry to say.
11:12 PM – “Good-Man”: wonderful!
11:15 PM – “Good-Man”: Sorry for your troubles man
11:16 PM – “Good-Man”: If it helps, I have taken your advice to heart
11:16 PM – “Good-Man”: Neither me or brian are very much interested in marriage
11:33 PM – “the puker”: I never was either. ‘least Brian doesn’t get the monthlies.
11:33 PM – “Good-Man”: So why did you do it?
11:33 PM – “Good-Man”: social pressure?
11:37 PM – “the puker”: Yeah, I was under the impression that we wouldn’t be jumping into anything for like another decade at least, but then she started making all these wedding planning appointments. I like her + think she’s funny, she hid the crazy well for a long
<distraction – I get put on the phone with her mom here>
11:37 PM – “Good-Man”: she was probably under social pressure to get married to
11:37 PM – “Good-Man”: i know i know
11:37 PM – “Good-Man”: heavy societal pressure? in a country like Japan??
11:38 PM – “Good-Man”: UNBELIEVABLE
11:46 PM – “the puker”: She’s the only pressure, except for when she gets angry + involves her very pushy mother. I just think she has some mental problems I wasn’t aware of. They’ve both been shouting at me for the past 2 hours because I am alive while she needs to study. It’s a lot to get into over a chat session I have a bog with things in it.
11:47 PM – “Good-Man”: blog
11:47 PM – “Good-Man”: sorry to hear it man
11:47 PM – “Good-Man”: if you ever need to crash on a couch
11:47 PM – “Good-Man”: you know
11:47 PM – “Good-Man”: that’s like
11:47 PM – “Good-Man”: 1000+ miles away
11:47 PM – “Good-Man”: and that you’ve puked on
11:47 PM – “Good-Man”: im here for you
11:48 PM – “the puker”: Yeah, sorry again about that. If you hear of any places hiring people I could do with employment in my own country one day, but otherwise I tend to just tough things out. everybody’s got their problems
11:49 PM – “Good-Man”: fair enough
11:49 PM – “the puker”: you feeling okay anyway?
11:50 PM – “Good-Man”: Yeah man im fine
11:50 PM – “Good-Man”: I am over this shit
11:50 PM – “the puker”: just out of scientific curiosity, has the other one swelled to compensate yet?
11:50 PM – “Good-Man”: no
11:50 PM – “Good-Man”: i dont believe that actually happens
11:51 PM – “Good-Man”: If you were to look right at me i don’t think you’d realize i was missing one
11:51 PM – “Good-Man”: but that’s mostly because my scrotal sack was large to begin with
11:51 PM – “Good-Man”: and kind of… has “filled in” the vacuum left there
11:52 PM – “the puker”: just kind of settled in the center then?
11:54 PM – “Good-Man”: no
11:54 PM – “Good-Man”: the scrotal sac is bifurcated
11:54 PM – “Good-Man”: its still on the right
11:55 PM – “the puker”: being that right handed men tend to have their left sac hang lower, you’d wonder if it didn’t find its way to the other side occasionally.
11:57 PM – “the puker”: was bifurcated something you had to look up?, + as I ask you about your balls, my wife and her mom are deciding how she should move away to a weekly hotel/ apartment, so that no one will flush a toilet while she’s trying to concentrate on studying
11:57 PM – “Good-Man”: bifurcated the word>?
11:57 PM – “Good-Man”: no
11:57 PM – “Good-Man”: i like words
11:57 PM – “Good-Man”: i know them
Never tell your password to anyone.
Monday, February 06, 2012
9:32 PM – “Good-Man”: to bed sir
9:32 PM – “Good-Man”: to bed!
9:34 PM – “the puker”: It’s only 9:30pm. I’m working on an online application, so I can maybe one day get the hell out of here before my wife sticks a knife in me. You back to work yet?
9:34 PM – “Good-Man”: yes
9:34 PM – “Good-Man”: been back to work for a week now
9:34 PM – “Good-Man”: its funny to be how incredibly forthcoming you are to me about the state of your marriage
9:36 PM – “the puker”: I don’t want anyone to find the body + think it was just an “accident”, also I figure it is the way it is.
9:36 PM – “Good-Man”: your incredibly vague statement is true
9:36 PM – “Good-Man”: i suppose
9:37 PM – “the puker”: I also apologize for the slew of ball jokes you must now endure
9:37 PM – “Good-Man”: Eh.. im over it
“Good-Man” is now Offline.
She hasn’t spoken to me for the past 2 weeks now, which has been a lot more relaxing than I otherwise would have imagined.
In Other Words
Even I get tired of typing. Lacking other/ better evidence I have made a point to recall where messages concerning my troubles are. All the stuff here I just copied, pasted, and edited to ensure anonymity.
RyAn
October 2, 2011
Need your address to send your birthday gift. I live in a place that has stores now, so I went to one with Rie, but she left me there + disappeared + didn’t answer her phone for 2 hours, so I had to walk miles & miles home. There’s something/ or several things seriously fucking wrong with that girl, and I need your address to mail this.
AmS
October 2, 2011
Geeze that’s weird. Was she mad at you?
My address is
AmS
That one place
By that big rock
Town & Zip code
Yay birthday remembrance! I can’t believe I’m turning redacted, so weird
RyAn
October 2, 2011
She’s always mad. I sat next to her at the Indian buffet + she insisted I sit at the opposite side of the table, but there were 2 seats on each side/ plenty of room, so I didn’t see the point in following the order. She stares at the TV or types into her phone heedless of anything else, so I figured I ought to be able to see the TV too. Then she screamed “fuck you” and “Fuck you, you bastard!” several times – good and loud and crazy enough to get the cooks to peer out of the kitchen window. I figure if she’s mad it’s her problem, but she calmed down after an hour and a half of not talking to me. Then she ditched me when she realized I was going to buy something for you, ’cause she only thinks it’s fair to contribute, when it’s a gift for her family. I have hundreds of crazy Rie stories. She seemed perfectly nice and normal until she moved to Kagoshima with me, ….but she’s been a sack full of rabbits and vipers ever since.
AmS
October 4, 2011
Holy jeepers! I can’t see a time when public outbursts would be justified, that’s mortifying. And not very helpful. Is that extra uncommon for Japanese people to blow fuzes? They seem extra proper/tightly wound.
Its possible she’s just looking to get a reaction from you when she’s upset. So when you ignore it/carry on as normal she feels like she has to keep upping the anty so to speak. I also ignore dramatic displays so as to not encourage it but that can come off as indifferent and make people even more desperate. It sounds like she’s frustrated.
I would guess she has a short fuse and you don’t acknowledge/appease her when she wants you to before she gets to breaking point. So she gets super pissed and blows up extra big because when you ignore her, it’s like you don’t care.
I know nothing really phases you and you’re even tempered. Redacted—————————-
————————————- Maybe she’s not crazy…(hope so!) she just wants you to show her more feedback.
I’m sorry though that’s gotta be such a bumout, especially when it’s just the two of you all the time. Drama is the worst!!
When will you be home? Is she coming too?
RyAn
October 4, 2011
Well, …honestly, I don’t care most of the time.
I always think of that guy from the Shawshank Redemption – (whose wife got murdered while sleeping with the golf pro).
Except when I do get mad she gets exponentially more mad. This is the 1st week since I got hit by the car where she hasn’t tried to make me leave the apartment. I’m foreign, so I can’t rent anything myself. That’s well beyond petty squabbling; It’s fucking evil.
She was also ticked off all summer because I have a summer vacation and she doesn’t. WTF?
There does seem to be way more than the usual amount of seriously fucking crazy people in this country – because they ARE so damned rigid about everything, but they never let it out in public so far as I know..
I’ll be back in the evening of December 22nd + I gotta head back here January 9th. She didn’t want to ask the president of her company to take off, or she didn’t want to pay for a ticket, …or she didn’t want to come, …I dunno, but it’ll just be me then
——————————————————————
-Some kid at school had a giant grin as he tried to stuff this mystery into my pocket:
“I am your flower is my dream. I speak flower. Is Thenk you. Bay bay flower. Hello good morning Thank you flower.”
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AmHa
November 1, 2011
Ummm Ryan… That’s scary.============Redacted============. Be careful. Even if another box of spaghetti was already open, it shouldn’t have been that big of a deal, right? Eventually, both boxes would have been used. Be careful.
RyAn
November 2, 2011
+ Spaghetti in particular! It’s not like it’s going to get stale is it? You had it much worse I’m sure. she goes off only rarely, and I’m reasonably capable of protecting myself when need be.
Do you think it’s really that hard to find a job in the US? I’ve always meant to move back home, but everyone on the internet is always saying there just isn’t anything out there. The only real experience I have is teaching, but I don’t have any certification, and they keep firing teachers in the US anyway.
There is a send to mobile button and it is checked. Should I uncheck that – is it convenient or annoying?
AmHa
November 2, 2011
Please check it, it doesn’t annoy me, and I’m always happy to hear from you.
As for jobs, it just depends on how patient you are and what you want to do. There are programs here in —place— where you can get your masters in teaching which includes a certification without a teaching background – I’d imagine they have those in other places as well.
I was thinking about you and why you don’t return to the states. Is it still the health insurance? At some point, if it hasn’t been done already, health insurance companies are not supposed to discriminate against people for pre-existing conditions. Or “marry” someone who has good benefits. But don’t stay in a bad situation – and in another country — for health insurance.
You can protect yourself against most things – but what happens if she does get that boiling water thrown on you? What happens when she uses some sort of weapon? Life’s too short to deal with people who are so volatile.
What kills me – and maybe it bothers you too – is that I’m a passionate person and get excited about things, but I felt kinda dead and dull with him because I was always on edge and felt like I had to blend into the background in order to hide.
RyAn
December 4, 2011
I thought it was like 2013/ 2014 when the new healthcare system would come into effect. There’s that, and the fact that I’m not really qualified to do a lot of things – that keeps me from moving back. I did apply for 2 jobs off of Monster.com (being that i don’t know any other way to go about it). I think they would have gotten a thousand or so other applications as well though, …
Things are better right now anyway. I guess she let off a lot of stress then. I doubt that’s the very end of it though. Actually, I just bought a better mountain bike off of ebay, so that’ll probably upset her greatly. I’ve had the same one for 6 or 7 years, and it’s getting to be dangerous for me to ride it at the speeds that I do. A part on my racing bike broke, and I had to use my mountain bike for the last 3 weeks, which has re-mangled up my old trampoline knee. You only buy a bike once in a great while, so I figure you ought to get a good one while you have the opportunity. She always gets upset whenever money has to be used on anything that isn’t savings, or dessert. She says her doctor said that she’s too small and or thin, so her hormones are going to be out of balance.
I don’t know if this “redacted bachelor’s party” thing is going to happen or not.
AmHa
December 5, 2011
Hi Ryan, Doctors in Japan are weird. I’ve never heard of anything about someone being too small or thin and having hormones out of balance — and if that is the case, there has to be some form of treatment that they can give her to regulate that. Seriously…
As for spending money, I can commisserate with her – these are hard times economically, but a new mountain bike is quite a bit cheaper than a car or other mode of transportation – and you do need something to get from point A to point B. Maybe try broaching the subject like that – and all of the money that you will save from not missing work due to injuries…
I highly doubt that the Matt’s bachelor’s party will come to fruition. I don’t have a ton of time off for the holidays either because I just switched jobs. So even if it does, I don’t know if I’ll be able to be there. But if you are going to be in the States over that time, I’d like to try to see you – it’s been a really long time. I’d say that I’d like to meet your wife, but if I know that she’s being abusive to you, I might not be very nice.
Besides Monster, try careerbuilder – and craigslist. (Although be careful with Craigslist). Other than that, you could probably network with people on facebook. I’m sure that there are people who we went to school with who have openings in their companies. I work as a nurse – so unless you have your nursing degree or another health-related licensure I can’t help very much – There are programs like Teach for America where if you don’t have your teaching degree, you can still get a job teaching and they usually help you to get your teaching license. One of my friends from high school is always looking for teachers for his boarding school in Alaska .
Anyway, my point is that there has to be something – you deserve better than to be someone’s stress relief ball.
Take care,
RyAn
December 8, 2011
Lot’s of good advice there! Thank you for that! I’ve never heard of most of these things before. I was also trying to use usjobs.gov for a long time, but the competition is pretty fierce; They make a point to hire people who have already worked in government or the armed forces before the rest of the populace, so it’s hard to even get considered.
Alaska sounds really cool though! That’d be like living in the US, while similarly – not really living in the US. I’ve always been interested in the bright all summer/ dark all winter phenomenon too, but I’m hesitant to move there just to work in a cannery.
I’ll be in the US December 22nd – January 8th. Ken’s girlfriend left a note on my wall expressing a desire to meet, which is one of the few things I would go all the way into New York city to do. It’d be cool if you came as well, but I understand it is a much greater distance and time issue for you. I have skype too if you ever want to chat like on Star Trek.
You know what anybody else is up to?
RyAn
December 8, 2011
Oh + my wife isn’t coming with me this Christmas, because she didn’t want to ask her company’s president if she could use her vacation days then, because she doesn’t want to spend the money, and because she wouldn’t be able to sit around and watch TV at her mom’s house (which I did last year + it was SOOOOOO boring) (as nice as I find her mom to be… we just sat on the floor for 5 days eating the same noodles 3 times a day, + they watched TV most of the time.)
I’ve always been a firm believer in the frugality of bicycles over cars, but when you pursue cycling as a hobby/ something o be relished + enjoyed, the costs can go way up.
I got one of these off a guy on ebay who had crashed it. Serious discount off the retail price, because of the cosmetic damage, but it was far from cheap. I figure after a number of years of use it will have paid off – particularly if I were to move to Alaska or something. That sounds cool!
RyAn
February 1
Dear AmHa,
My contract expires at the end of March, and I want to see if I can’t move back home. Did you have any information on that school in Alaska? :.
This all seems daunting, …probably why I’ve put it off for so long. Do you know what a good resume looks like? I tried to write one, + it’s done well enough for me here anyway.
AmHa
February 1
I will contact Redacted. I kinda know what a good resume looks like . Once my computer is up and running I’ll send you mine.
RyAn
February 1
Then I can just switch the names + contact details + I’m good to go! Nice!
Thank you for doing that + all the advice + everything too. I do appreciate it. I’m working on that teach for America thing you told me about now too. They want a lot of information.
My new bike arrived + I spilled a pot of water on the PlayStation, last weekend. She loves money, so she hasn’t spoken anything other than a single grunt to me since last Monday. It’s kind of nice and peaceful now really.
Do you ever get back to check up on the monkies? Were they given drugs for that long a period of time?
AmHa
February 9
no problem – eventually, I’ll get around to sending out my resume but right now I’m in the middle of a run of working and it sounds like I’m going to be mandated to stay over tomorrow.
I’m glad that your wife isn’t being crummy currently. I haven’t seen the monkeys since I left in July but I have talked with the people with whom I used to work and they seem to be doing well. yes, they received drugs for quite a long period of time. It was really sad to leave them actually. But some of the ones that I loved were being transferred to other facilities because they were getting old and couldn’t take drugs anymore (so they would be transferred to facilities that were retirement homes or else to facilities that just did old age studies) – and others were dying – and that just made me sad. At that point, I figure it was time to move on. Take care, AmHa
RyAn
February 10
My wife says she’s moving out soon. She may just be saying that out of habit + of her love for drama, but it seems quite likely. The bike is fun anyway.
AmHa
February 10
How do you feel about your wife’s supposed moving out – and why is she saying that?
RyAn
February 10
She always says that. I drove up from Kagoshima 2 months before her to start work. She told me not to buy any furniture for this apartment until she moved here. My friend gave me 2 single futons.
OK.
I didn’t buy anything.
She wanted to leave the night she arrived, she was really mad that there were 2 separate beds, but then she never wanted to buy a full sized one.
If the people at my school find out – if I get divorced, I could lose my job. It’s embarrassing and sad, but I really think she is fucking crazy
AmHa
February 10
I can see how you would feel embarrassed and sad – I felt that way just leaving a relationship where I didn’t even care about the guy – so I can’t imagine if I had ever loved him. Were you supposed to sleep on the floor until she arrived? I would think she would have been happy to have free furniture. I wonder when people flip out over things like that how they would react in a real problem –
<like me getting hit by a car!>
like imagine you had a child and s/he were diagnosed with cancer. Kinda scary.
RyAn
February 10
Yeah! I made another super long blog post about a lot of the stuff that happened, with a small section devoted to little things that cause her extreme stress.
It’s also interesting, though probably not the best system, that one part of a couple can refuse a divorce. She’s asks for one maybe 15% of the times she gets mad. I don’t want to indulge her each time, lose my house, + visa status,
…+ I like to think I can protect the next guy from her fucking up their life too.
Also, for reasons I do not understand, she prepared a demonstration page for me to see how they 
the Galactic Truth 