You want something. But you don’t know what it is. So you wait. In the meantime you watch and listen and try to feel something and sense that somehow you are not dreaming all this up: It is a completely beautiful thing to sit in a place and have people bring you drinks while being polite about it, especially if you happen to be lucky enough to be sat opposite someone of the other sex who does not happen to think you are bad enough not to at least flash some kind of beautiful smile to at least once throughout whatever passes for dinner and drinks these days at the places that no one can actually afford to pay for unless there was sex behind all of it. Trust me, if we were all eunuchs, most of the culinary industry would quickly fall. Happily, cock not in hand but mindful of said cock, we are not and thusly we travail through beautiful appetizer after appetizer and lovely drink after drink, until the inevitable check after which our fates go through the same doors in we entered, outside of which we are no more than a fuller, possibly cockier due to several tequila sours, walking bag of bones, than before, but not definitely, due to the simple fact that perhaps we are missing something more than after we leave.
This is a purely selfish thing- Bring me another beer wench-! Your promises matter little to me as it seems you are out for foreskin rather than truth. Your bored Mariachi rendition is more than tiresome, it’s turning the bland guacamole brown quicker than usual, but then you knew that and I love you for it wannabe Blondie. All of mine and yours diehard dreams of being more than we were born to be are just like the smoke from the fags we bum from disappointed others to puff ourselves to slow death upon, but that’s just a bad B movie screenplay that hopefully will never be made and we, we, us, you and I and them and us, and all of us, we are all real and not them, we are us and flesh and blood and we are real and those things don’t matter and you think you love me but you don’t actually know what love is other than loving something that always leaves you and I know I don’t love you but I would probably fuck you if we were drunk enough because that’s what I learned from watching J.R. on Dallas for all those years. We are almost the greater sum of stupid philosophy and ramshackle bedfellows. Put a flannel over us on the coffee stained couch and we will Labrador love you forever.
God is weary of reproofs and I am looking forward to the new Suntory White Label coming out soon, but in the meantime I think of masturbation only slightly as I feebly aim my greater starship toward the heretofore unknown constellation of you.
Dear PD,
I have found you. At long last I have glimpsed, nay- known you beyond your usual flirtatious ways. You, Perfect Drunk you, you playful bitch, you got sauced last night and I had my way with you. And you liked it. Ha HA (Me standing with manly flowing cape and leather accoutrements on cliffs overlooking the sea beneath a daunting sky laughing haughtily)!
No really, I liked it too. Actually, Perfect Drunk, I just wanted to say thanks. Thanks for last night. Thanks for finally showing up. Thanks for finally giving me what has eluded me all these years. And when I least expected it. Who knew Masa would call me up out of the clear blue sky telling me he needed a fourth to pair up evenly with some ladies he had arranged an impromptu dinner with not four hours hence? How could one know that my vocal cords, in conjunction with my lungs, mouth and voice would completely lock my brain out of this one? In a revolt the impact of which will remain largely debatable for years, the Coup d’Etat of my Major Organ by an unlikely triumverate could shake the very bodily foundations we’ve come to live by. That and answering in startingly good Japanese- Japanese that’s just a little too good, a little beyond our range, you know- but Masa didn’t blink (as we were on the phone I’m not sure about that). He did quickly applaud the choice of my rebelling organs- basically telling Mr. Brain to F-off- and had me to meet him in typical Tokyo fashion: at the statue of the dog. Weird. Intriguing. If there’s a chance of meeting you there, of course I’m in PD.
An aside: My grandfather always preached the gospel of you, Perfect Drunk. “It’s like a good Bloody Mary,” he’d always go on about after one or two of his own Vodka Tonics, “a little spicy, tart, there’s the crunch of the celery and you know the Vodka’s there, but no one ever got really tight on one, just comfortable…and…” he would add shaking his finger, “still in control, mostly anyway.”
PD, let me tell you: This is how I try to drink. With you in mind, but always trying to be a good grandson. I try to heed words of wisdom, but all too often the all-powerful desire to just “have another” (which I attribute- along with my stomach’s amazing ability to digest anything- to being a rare mix of Scottish/Cherokee) takes over after the glass before you mysteriously empties itself. Over and over again. It’s tough to measure whether or not you are exceeding your target consumption rate of one drink per hour when you mix shochu with water over ice and you wear no timepiece. You trickster you.
Especially this being Japan. In search of you, the Japanese consume the most spirits in the world. Hands down # 1. Sorry Russians (keep slogging down the antifreeze). Although the Koreans and their small green bottles of Soju are catching up, the Japanese by far outdrink all of their Asian neighbors, as well as the rest of the world (yes, even the Germans), despite their genetically unfavorable disposition toward alcohol in general, due to a lack of acetaldehyde dehydrogenase type I (ALDH-I) which causes extreme facial and cardiovascular reactions, headaches, nausea, and the infamous tie-on-the-head-at-karaoke, etc.
The simple facts remain that alcohol consumption has quadrupled in Japan since the 1960s. There has never been a prohibition. There is nothing amoral about drinking. It is the social lubricant par excellence and is basically how the generally über-shy Japanese men still manage (though barely) to populate the country. Truth is alcohol is not even considered a drug here. Hence the lack of regulations on drinking, such as the ability to purchase alcohol 24 hours a day, no laws prohibiting public consumption (even as a passenger in a car), the rare D.U.I. checkpoint featuring police asking you to breath into their cupped hand which they then smell and base their decision to allow you to continue or apprehend you, and of course the famous beer/sake vending machines (though sadly these are fading away). Though the majority of the natives don’t fastidiously take advantage of the aforementioned “loopholes”, many of the expatriots residing here do. The Japanese are pretty staid about their drinking until it comes time to drink: (unless you’re the Finance Minister) after work.
Or as a part of work. Without the after-six salaryman crowd out sousing up prospective clients, the well-maintained independent drinking/eating establishments that still thrive here (franchises have not made very much headway at all) would for the most part be bankrupt. It is a part of national duty to drink one for the team. In order to keep the economy running (from the DTs) and business breathing (hard and heavy from Cirrhosis), everyone drinks excessively to let off stress, which in turns more than likely multiplies stress. Add the popular possibility of nomihodai (all-you-can-drink) and if you are an up-and-coming young salaryman, you are out at the bars every night of the week. As demonstrated by Masa last night, “I’m so bad drunk, Manny-san, but one more! YES!” All in pursuit of you PD!
But I digress. Only becasue I can handle it. Because the combination of beer, shochu, water, sashimi, tofu (when I ordered edamame they called me “quaint…like a country person”, when I ordered shishamo (pregnant River Smelt) they pretended not to hear), spinach salad, deep fried Sea Bream (the head was amazing!) all slowly consumed in small proportions over three hours added up to you Perfect Drunk. You know how you are: not too wobbly, not too weary, though quite upbeat and charming. And of course you lead to great ability at speaking that dapper, witty brand of Japanese the four JAL stewardesses (ranging from cute and sweet to dropdead, “Ring for another bag of honey-roasted peanuts, Manny! Hurry!” gorgeous) just love. Did I thank you yet, Perfect Drunk?
In the end, we parted ways after collectively having finished a bottle of Satsuma-Imo (Sweet Potato) Shochu, I had been challenged to and won three arm wrestling duels (ambidextrously no less) and the young lady seated facing me, who had been playing a drunken footsie with me for two hours, asked me for my phone number. I don’t know when the last time someone played footsie with me and asked for my phone number. Here’s me waiting- excitedly like a small girl in a dress and pigtails to hear the ice cream man- for her call.
PD, even missing the train and walking the 30 minutes home (amidst a silvery drizzle of rain) sort of considering stalking all the ladies’ legs beckoning to me in the gentle midnight cool to drift almost instantaneously into R.E.M. where I dream of a desert oasis housing a carnival on the banks of a beautiful and ancient river. I find myself amidst an oddly large amount of British people where we play with shotguns and use paint in strange and ritualistic ways. I wake up laughing several times. At one point a robed Jesus walks through holding a plate and comments, “The hummus is good today.” I wake up when the saran wrap I’m trying to rescue a family of Alaskan Huskies from washing away down the river with snaps and I dive in after them. No alarm, no nothing.
You snazzy minx you, Perfect Drunk, you segue into the Perfect Hangover. You’re not a Yanni hangover: nauseous, headachy and semi-retarded, but more akin to a Gershwin hangover: jaunty and fun, a bit slow in places, but able to pull off the whole day admirably (even without coffee).
Here’s to you PD, you fickle bitch goddess. See you at the vending machine…
Love,
Manny
Such thoughts can occur fleetingly as one moves through an almost impenetrable crowd of people with no purposeful directions. As soon as the buildings ceased their dangerous dances, I exited the at high speed making way for the subway, pausing only long enough to gulp down my coffee and gather snapshots (some mental, some celluloid) of the invariably shocked faces of all I passed. Most women clutched at whatever stood nearest, whether it be their man attempting stoic strength, their non-comprehending children (no, no honey, the devils aren’t coming just yet) or the telephone pole by the delivery van of unloaded mannequin limbs with its radio blaring bulletins of “Do Not Panic” and “Tsunami Warning” intermittently. Regardless of fear level or even age everyone had their mobile phone out either snapping pictures of the sky or jamming up the satellites with calls to mom, grandma, someone, anywhere to do something, right, you can can’t you? I found an entrance just past a coagulation of chefs & their off-duty biker friends guffawing nervously and chain-smoking and I made my way down past the rough current of hundreds fighting to get up. I found the locker where I had stashed my things, made a quick combination and dropping the dross (including a good bottle of sake I had no hands for) into a shopping bag I madeway for the entrance where the worried-looking olive-uniformed head of the Tenjin subway stop had commenced to announce from a malfunctioning bullhorn that “Due to…earthquake…skrwk…appened to-today here an…krrabggttt…veral aftershocks which will no doubt be c…dfhdksd soon as well as the tidal wave…qweunenks that will soon be here we mu…sreeeuuk…grievously apologize that…xxervttx…should exit the underground…kerrauwkk!” and turning to me and waving his hands mime-ishly and pursing his lips and puffing up his cheeks shouted, “Go Away! Big Tsunami Come! Go Away!” as he followed his slim, male, hand-on-hat team to the door which no doubt led to safety. I madeway up to ground level snagging my bag along the way and dropping it off at the bum’s multilevel cardboard living space, which had held together quite well. I noticed him and his partners dutifully sweeping up the sidewalk, ignoring the gawking, shouting pedestrians purposelessly crowding everywhere like joyless people at a zoo of bored animals cleaning up the place.
I jumped on an empty bus heading toward Hakata, Fukuoka’s main station which no doubt had cancelled all local trains and shinkansen and was rerouting busses to compensate for the overflow and from where I could easily catch a taxi to the airport. Usually. I boarded another world when I got on that passengerless bus, that elaborate though simple setting of the movie theater prior to a screening: hushed and with an air of fog due to the projector’s cell-less light casting a shadow upon drawn velveteen drapes. I sat in the middle and awaited my show. Rise curtain, rise! Screw the trailers, give me the grit and gore! Encore! Bravo! More More! The abstract terror and imperceptible shock the earthquake had could easily be read in the multitudinous faces blending together in a mad panoramic of horror stretching city block to city block as I passed them behind my cold scrim of glass. They stared and pointed. I stared, they pointed. They slowly became one, their faces blending together, like an ever-hastening flipbook. And I felt strangely like the jolt hadn’t actually happened to me but to this collective “one” and I had become some intruder barging in on “his” collective pain. Just as the exclusion hit me the theater/bus came to a grinding halt and, in thrusting open its doors, let in the subjects of my curiosity-the afflicted-whom streamed in, gasping and pushing all talking to themselves, congratulating themselves on the luck they somehow acquired for making this showing/riding, for which a thousand strong now clamored just outside the small metal doors, just below the loudspeaker announcing “Regretfully folks, this showing is all full up, as you can see, but Fear Not, for another more beautiful showing can be seen in 15 minutes to an hour. Thank You. Watch your heads, we’re moving folks!” in just a tad over-the-top Vincent Price deadpan.
A 20-minute montage of scattered faces amid screaming engines later the wannabe-mockumentary short film-ride ended with a high-pressure gush and release of people not knowing where to go or what to do. No trains, no busses and a 5000+ queue thronging from out of the station like a burst heart spewing confused blood with no range to roam. Hailing a taxi I pummeled past the pointing hands and gawking faces and jumping into the open door ordered in a harsh Japanese to “step on it to the airport!” not knowing, though soon realizing, I had found the most dangerous, most knowledgeable taxi driver in all of Fukuoka. His speed tactics threw me into a reminiscence of long ago Baja Mexico drunken revelry where the taxista asking me in his astounding broken English if I wanted to take the scenic route. Me answering in my impure Barcelona accent of course, my friend, tonight is a good night for scenery and him smiling devilishly driving atop the sandy beachfront, dodging the incoming breakers, the randy mongrels and the occasional bonfire. There’s nothing like a cabbie passing his well-worn bottle of tequila over the seat amidst the waning moonlit dunes of the baja peninsula. Just like a cabbie who knows the backstreets of Japan like the back of god’s hand and gets you to the airport in 5 minutes, with just enough time to give the metal detectors ample opportunity to dissect my still quaking ass.
Then comes Seoul and a whole new Asia: The Mainland. The dirt. The sewer. The stank. The touchy-feel. The lack of personal space. The realness. The sex. The sweat. The Soju. The refreshing feel of a nonapologetic society. The heady crush of 12,000,000 bumping and grinding upon sidewalks, subways & stairways leaves a bit of a wry smile in the corner of my mouth. The rough and dirty remains always wins out when measured against the demure and submissive. But as comparisons are odious let’s get to the real dirt: Arrive Inch’on Int’l 15:20. Arrive Seoul 16:30. Arrive Windroad Hostel 17:00. Walk random Hyewha area streets reminiscent of backalley Shibuya lost hillside streets full of good Korean izakaya-style eateries whose signs confuse the non-Korean speaker like a mirror backside down with their supposed linguistic perfection. 18:00-ish spy a Japanese lantern with うどん(udon) scribbled perfectly welcoming to my beautifully lost eyes. I scampered in to the nearly deserted restaurant to a mouthful of いらっしゃいませ! (Come on in!) and an invitation to the second floor mamasan who speaks great Japanese and loves onsen and suggests the kimchi-udon, which tastes great. We converse until a strangely oblong and short man with a triangular face and a scar running cheek to neck enters and takes a seat just behind me. I glance absently at him and he stares blankly back, an obtrusive “Up Yours Mayn!” of a glare. That is, until he attempts to order in an unmistakably Cantonese-inflected English and the Japanese-speaking mama-san taps me politely on the shoulder saying, “なんって？ (Huh?). I ask the guy if he speaks English and as he nods I ask him what he wants to eat. Noodles. Ok. There’s this and this. Meat. Um, sorry, no meat. Shrimp, seafood, no meat. What?! Sorry, bro. Ok, noodles, this, this Kanji （鍋）means Pot, right. Gimme That. Nabe? Um, yeah, pot, meat, noodles, ok? Ok, mama-san, you got that? はい、わかりました (yeah, I got it.)
He gets rice and yaki-ebi and a bowl of miso. It’s ok, he mumbles, stomach needs food. He eats greedily. Finishes. Ehh. Huh? Buy you a green bottle? Ehh? The Korean drink…the green bottle, you know? Yeah bro, have a seat. Let’s get a drink.
He pulls up his chair and asks what I’m doing in Seoul, how I can speak Korean and how big of a drinker I am and orders a bottle of Soju all in the span of a few seconds.
“Let’s see, yes? You know how to drink like Korean?”
“Shit man, I pour, you drink, vice versa. By the way, I was speaking Japanese back there, I’m in Seoul on business and I can handle my own when it comes to the bottle, whatever bottle.”
He pours. I pour. We shoot. “Business. Me too. What business you do?”
“I’m an English teacher in Japan.”
“You lie! Drink! Shut-up-Drink! No one do that man. Japanese don’t speak English!”
“Umm, ok, ya got me. If you must know, I’m a Mossad double agent tracking a Palestinian terror cell trying to get to Pyongyang posing as a porn photographer just back from Japan. You know, freedom and democracy, for one and all, right.“
After teh quake it's all a blur
“Man, fuck you man! Drink! Fuck democracy, man! I’m China. I’m Hong Kong. We Communist. But I’m rich…how you say you understand that: rich communist, who not in government, just regular, everyday businessman, likes girls. Look this: today bought my girlfriend some jewels. Cheap. Look good tho yeah. My wife too. But this place scare me man, every Asia place scare me, ‘cept the woman, you know like nice young, soft virgin, young, like new piece of wood, so smooth. Man, you Americans, you think you Big Democracy, Big World power, but you worse than China. China good compare to you. At least China no lie to people. Americans stupid they think Bush no lie to them. More stupid they think it ok to lie to protect ‘nation secrets’. Drink man! One more bottle, you think? Man, China government say, ‘China people listen: we give you what you want if you let us have only one government party.’ We say: ‘yeah, you sure? We want money.’ Government say: ‘good, we too. We bring internet. You run business. We run government. You butt out we let you get rich, drunk, have women. Deal?’ Chinese people say: ‘fuck yeah!’ we don’t care ‘bout air and water but we know it’s bad. We know too many people. Billion fuckin’ people man in China, lot in India too, man, it’s no good, but what you do? You only one and one can’t stop government so let them be government and you be man and have money and drink- DRINK! – and have women and laugh man, life over too quick. Here my card man, Billy Wong, you call me Billy, you call me man, come to Hong Kong, I give you everything you ever need man, you never leave man, girls so good you never can think of nothing else, you never need coffee keep you awake man, never need no stupid fat American drug to get your dick hard man, stupid Americans so lazy don’t even like real sex anymore just sex with fucking fake tit ugly girls. Man Americans have it so good too good and they so stupid don’t know how to use what they have don’t know how to have real fun only know how to piss off world and be stupid and say ‘no world, we big nice country protect world from terrorist!’ maybe American people stupid man but world people not so stupid man, we know, China know America real terrorist, give money to bin laden and terrorist for oil. But man, you see, China don’t care man, China just too big to care about stupid American people. We been here since the beginning and you think we won’t be here till end you stupid too. America like a fad man a funny joke man, they like big balloon go pop soon man, but China we be here long time we don’t care what you say communist republican socialist you call an asshole an asshole. Man, you drink. You drink now Manny!”
“Yeah, ok Billy I’ll drink Billy. I’ll drink to you and to me and to tonight and to the pretty little Korean girls around us here listening to us kick up the dirt but that’s it. I’m not drinking to China or America, just us and now, Billy. Right now.”
“Cool man, I fuckin’ drunk man.”
Cool indeed.
The wind woke me today, howling to and fro as if a racetrack circuit ran through 50 year old screens in each screech corner turn of my house. It’s the rain-wind. There’s the rain smell. It’s the warm strong rain powered by a frenzied atmosphere, the clouds swirl and sail by hurriedly above while the wizened bamboo stretches and waves oceanically like some ancient angered spirit out of that one Kurosawa film. The lunar pull is so great the moon should be huge in my window, though it’s just now 6am. The sea should be splashing my thatched bungalo, but I’m housed by cement miles inland. The thick gray mass of sky slowly lightens to an ashy wet, lazily softening at the edges and moving toward the dark center, the black heart of the storm just above my house still writhing and thick. I roll over and imagine I’m in Contempt with Bardot, but we’ve moved to Nice and have a small hamlet on the Med. and, most importantly, she doesn’t hate me. She fixes me coffee.
Something about the smell of rain always gets me a fat dose of la belle Brigitte.
Or maybe it’s not the rain, perhaps it’s the faint phantom of too little sleep and too many Bloody Marys. Maybe it’s both. I usually don’t take Wednesday night’s to the bar, but something about the energy in the air yesterday just made my neighbor come over with a pack of cigarettes and a mouthful of gab.
She opened a bottle of riesling I had stowed and I grabbed the vodka, all nice and slow like. Frozen, it poured thick, like liquid ice. Easy, like warm whiskey in a western. Talk ranged from the day’s Spring weather to Korea, her rapidly approaching lover (currently en route from Honolulu) and my aversion to Wal-mart’s ruthless capitalistic pigs addicted to their bottom lines. Support Our Troops: Buy Foreign?
Angered at the fuzzy-edged memory, I call the interns Brigitte 1, 2 & 3 and we dwell on the rain, drinking orange soda from straws and tossing peanuts into our open, inviting mouths.
It’s not all so bad.
