hello michael

even if last night were something that i recalled sequentially, it would best be described as a series of instants. as descriptions of just the things that happened.

being polite is here is very confusing. some of the whiffs were going out, and i asked my host mother what she thought about it. if she had plans. no, no, i was free to go. but...we could do this other thing she had mentioned. she pauses. not so many smiles this time. so i stay.

staying is the best decision that i have ever made.

we go one stop down on the joban line to a salsa bar. called cuba japan or cuba salsa. i have mentioned to here that dancing is one of those things that really embarasses me. i already feel embarassed all of the time here, so dancing just does not seem fun. misato, host sister, comes with. she is really cute. she has a boyfriend.

junko likes to salsa dance. so i decide that i must dance with her, fear be damned. i eventually shuffle ineptly with her, and with a very cute somebody-else who thinks i am a total boob. i cannot dance. and i am wearing baggy white shorts and shoes with black socks.

misato likes to smoke cigarettes. misato's boyfriend yuki likes to smoke cigarettes. misato's boyfriend yuki does not like it when misato smokes cigarettes. neither does mom. mom goes home and we go to misato's favorite bar. there i will have enough drinks to start thinking that misato likes me. and i will have enough of her marlboro menthols to start thinking that i have just brushed my teeth. but that is not the point of the story. and she doesn't like me. not like that. i'll file this under a new people-category i am trying to create for myself. there used to be two bins: people i want to have sex with and people i do not want to have sex with. i dream of a day when i can put people like misato in bin number three: people that i am attracted to without thinking constantly of sex. i'll only have to turn back the whole of evolution.

misato's bar has every kind of bourbon whiskey you can imagine. i assume that it is bourbon whiskey. all the signs said it was boubon whiskey. i had a japanese kind, which was bad. i had another kind that i chose at random by designating the top right hand of the rows and columns of bourbon 0,0 and flipping a matchbook repeatedly to fill out the index, in binary, of my next drink. misato explained to me that there was no wireless at their house because they needed a rooter. she meant router, but it didn't matter. she had already spoken the jargon of my heart.

there was a third whiskey. misato told me that the bartenders were drunk. there was glasses guy, who was sort of the leader. there was other guy, who was the other guy. there was red sweater guy, who got picked on by glasses guy and other guy. g, o, and rs were teasing other. g was making rs shoot tequila. when rs couldn't take it anymore, g gunned three shots in a row. i told g he was superman. they liked that a lot.

g pulled up his shirt at me and made some giggly noise. i threw my shirt at his head.

they gave me a super tight budweiser tank top and kept my shirt. they gave me tequila. they said something in japanese, which i shouted back at them. it meant "more". they gave me more.

they wouldn't stop until i took off my pants. i sat at the bar in my budweiser tshirt and boxers and drank my water. we repeated senseless things back and forth to each other. rs kept saying "hello michael to me". i told them i was a samurai.

i told rs i would teach him to fight like a samurai. he came out from behind the bar, now shirtless, with things written all over his chest. we had a slap fight and jumped up and down. o and g joined us. o was also shirtless. g was completely naked and hiding behind a bar towel. g did a precarious dance with the towel that, surprisingly, did not fail. we all jumped up and down.

we all sang "stand by me". i sang the opening lines of "somebody to love" to a patron at the bar and kissed him on the forehead. we sang the star spangled banner.

i got a knife, made a surgical cut to my budweiser shirt and ripped it off like i was the hulk. the hulk had tried previously to just rip the shirt off, but it was really hard. hard unlike the muscles on my tour arms.

they taught me japanese. or curse words. or nonsense. i cannot remember any of what they taught me.

i told misato about my philosophy for tour or for life or for the next ten minutes. whatever. she was telling me about her being conflicted at ending college, wanting to leave the house, and not having the money. you know camping? you go out into the woods. and you have the things that you bring with you. and you can find things in the woods, resources. you can use them. you just need to combine the things you have, with the things in the woods enough to eat and sleep and drink and have sex. semi-significant glance. we're all camping, misato. don't worry about it.

tonight, after the fifth question with regard to where i was going to be tomorrow that i didn't know the answer to said "you don't know anything." i laughed. "don't worry. i like it."

i almost told misato how sad i was that she had a boyfriend.

it was two am. we had passed two hours together at the bar, jumping up and down and slap fighting each other and saying nonsense back and forth. there was no translation necessary, not back into japanese either. no one questioned or commented on "how funny" what we were doing was.

the day before someone told me that people in japan were not sarcastic. i told her, with the hint of sarcasm you are supposed to use when you are saying something that you are actually more serious about than maybe you should be that i could not handle that. but you don't have to be sarcastic if you can just say what you want.

here people walk into a four story shop full of model power rangers at the age of thirty unattended. they go to maid cafes. they have slap fights with americans. they laugh at a whole lot of things. rather than disbelieve everything and allow slivers of the truth to seep in via sarcasm, they just do what they want. when they want to make sweeping generalizations about a country they have only been in for a few days, they just do it.

those people at that bar knew how to have fun. it sure was strange, but everybody just did what came next. no one judged, no one had to make a joke to assure people that they were doing whatever it was that they were doing with a sufficient amount of inner disdain. i feel embarassed here because when i do something in public, it is my responsibility. people will not judge, but they will not validate either. not unless they actually want to.

"everybody does the same thing in japan" misato said to me. but it seems like that is the case because no one is afraid to. maybe the most honest thing we can do sometimes is take our slice of time and space seriously enough to giggle at it and have a blast. in some ways, this country i have been told is repressed is filled with people freer than almost anyone in the united states.