“Take me to Tokyo” I heard her whisper just behind my ear. I was sitting with my back resting on her chest, in between her legs as we watched Bill Murray once again master the medium of melancholy. Her whispering made the hair behind my ears stick up and I had to shake my legs a moment before responding with “what?”
“Take me to Tokyo. I’ve never been and I think we should go. Don’t you want to go back?” She said still talking carefully into my ear.
I had been to Tokyo once before – before the two of us had ever met. It was years ago when I was traveling from place to place, writing, trying to “find myself.” It took a great deal of time to ultimately find out I was just running away from myself – typical. Being the young kid that I was, I thought that I’d be able to outrun the demons by burning all my impulses down to their nubs… however, acting like that created a pretty large wake. And, that’s what had happened in Tokyo..
“Yeah. I’d like to go back.” I said performing each word like they deserved forethought. She’s always been good at picking up on my bullshit which just so happens to be one of the reasons we’re together.. I needed someone to reign me in. She squirmed out from behind me, paused the movie, and sat criss cross applesauce in between the tv and me.
“I’m being serious. We should go.” She said, her eyebrows sharpening, showing this was not one of those fleeting things people said when they daydream about traveling but rather a get out your laptop and let’s book it. Her eyes lit up and glowed with an intensity when she got this way which I loved. “Tell me more about what it’s like. I feel like you’ve never really talked about it.” She patted the space between us ushering for me to come closer and engage, trying to mask the demand with the her cuteness. I took the bait and sat up – leaning forward – not quite sure how I was going to answer her questions.
She sat there waiting for me to speak. “Well.. tell me about it. What was Tokyo like?”
“I don’t know… Rainy.”
~Tokyo
Rain fell from the drainpipe outside my window all night long – my own personal waterfall. It rained harder here than anywhere else I had ever been. It seemed to shoot down rather than simply fall like I had always learned it was supposed to. Each time you braved the streets outside you’d clasp onto that clear umbrella so hard as if preparing for it to whisk you off to Oz. But no, it never took me anywhere and instead, I created my own Oz… on the pages of my journal worn and torn.
When sleep fails to take me as it often does these days, I trudge downstairs to the cafe across from my place here in Ginza. Whisky and tea at 1am probably is not the best habit when battling insomnia nor is the cigarette that accompanies it on occasion. Something about them when they’re together helps me feel more in sync with the city; it’s culture of lonely men, drinking – smoking – just getting by. Tokyo doesn’t have many places that offer up a place for those/us anymore which makes me feel incredibly lucky to only be a stones throw from one.
The fluorescent sign that shines through my blinds all night long was on, lighting up the wet concrete as I splashed my way across the street to the cafe I’ve lovingly called Tsuruta’s on account of the owner, a kind old man who always takes care of me .
“Konbanwa, O-genki desu ka?” I said to Tsuruta after shutting the door, bowing quickly as I did then removing my shoes and rainjacket. He smiled and walked me to “my” spot in the corner then went off to the back to grab me a tea like he always did. I was surprised to see the place full on a weeknight. People scattered around in dimly lit booths enclosed by green plants, and up against weathered book shelves. When I close my eyes and think about my happy place, I always end up here.
Tsuruta brings me my tea and again we exchange thank you’s before he melts away on his path to another customer.
From my bag I pull out the three things that might as well be incorporated as a part of me by now. My journal, it’s pal the pen and my pack of smokes – the lonely man’s lunchbox if you will. It is within these three things that I simultaneously create and destroy all I have. The smokes – a buzz that aids me through the writers block. All the while wrecking havoc on the one thing that all twenty year olds take for granted, youth’s pilot light of health. My pen, my sword – a conduit that directs my fantasia of feelings onto the page… to be read rather than end up dead in mine own head. All the while creating – sometimes without care of where it will go, like fire set in the woods, not intended to destroy but fueled by carelessness all the same. My journal, the tinder to the fire! It’s contents the hot commodity I find myself coming back to, over and over, hoping something in it good enough to pull me from my job writing for others. It being the thing that I put the most faith in only solidifies my fear that this is all for nothing.
Oh to be a writer!
It is these few moments before picking up the pen and opening the journal that I often feel at my most inept. Trying to muster up some profound purpose that has gone unknown or original idea that brings people pleasure often is daunting as all hell. However, it is in these moments before the writing, where you feel your humanity and your oh so sour imperfection, that the fuel to create comes. Strip away the fear and all that’s left is truth.
“The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, that one is sometimes willing to commit sins for the sake of loyalty, that one does not push asceticism to the point where it makes friendly intercourse impossible, and that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one’s love upon other human individuals. No doubt alcohol, tobacco, and so forth, are things that a saint must avoid, but sainthood is also a thing that human beings must avoid.” -George Orwell
Hi.”
I looked up from my table to see someone standing above me, blocking out the light from a nearby Tiffany lamp. I squinted and lifted my hand as if saluting, prompting her to shuffle a bit to the side. I still couldn’t place her.
“Hi, I think you live down the hall from me.” She said.
“Right, how rude of me. Matt. And you are?”
“Nara.” She said brushing her hair from her face.
“Would you like to sit-“ She had already taken a seat across from me before I could finish.
“It’s really coming down outside isn’t it?” She said.
“Yeah sure is…” I said raising a hand softly to alert Tsuruta to bring another cup for tea.
He returned with a cup of tea for Nara and a glass of whiskey for me.
“Oh I’d love one of those as well” She smiled and asked politely of Tsuruta. He looked over at me a bit confused.
“Betsu no uisukī” I said in my spotty Japanese and with it he smiled and went off to grab her another glass.
“I’m sorry” she said. “I really haven’t picked up much Japanese since getting here. I always try to practice when ordering and people just look so sour seeing me and realizing that I’m Japanese American not Japanese Japanese.”
I definitely would have placed her as Japanese if I had noticed her on the street. Her hair was jet black and straight as the hairs of a paint brush. It rested just above her shoulders like much of the other girls here in Tokyo and framed her narrow face nicely. Her eyes being the one give away to her foreign-ness for they were a bright green that glowed as if the life inside of her was trying to break out. I had never seen a face like hers before and I was positive that it’d haunt me from then and forever more.
“What are you doing up this late?” She asked me, breaking the silence garnered from the trance I was in.
“Couldn’t sleep… Happens a lot, and after a few failed attempts of drifting off, I give up and pop over here. Besides, whiskey and tea taste great after midnight.”
“Cheers to that” she said toasting me.
This happened a few nights a week for the next month. Nara popping in on me at the cafe across the street. It was after the first week that we slept together. Unlike many of the people I meet here where small talk rules all, Nara liked to ask me things about myself that challenged me. Often, I didn’t have an idea of where my answers would end up when trying to respond to her. It was thrilling, feeling so uncomfortable yet comfortable talking to someone who had no other motive than trying to understand who and why you are.
We developed a routine if you will of writing letters to each other in between our cafe rendezvous’s. I’d wake up to her in my apartment asleep on my arm, drooling into one of the many shirts that I slept in. After sneaking off to the other room I’d write her a letter telling her how beautiful she looked in the morning and how seeing her half naked in my bed was the thing that was going to propel me through the day. I’d always leave it for her inside the fridge on one of the coffee drinks I learned to stock just for her. She’d be gone when I got back in the afternoon but there’d be a letter waiting for me in my bed perched on the pillows she helped me buy in an effort to make my apartment look less like a dorm room.
It was a Friday… I got home and went straight to my bed to look for Nara’s letter – but there wasn’t one. She must’ve been too busy and needed to get home for work I told myself. A week went by without her meeting me across the street at the cafe which made me begin to worry. Had I done something wrong? Was she avoiding me or just not interested anymore? I had never bothered her at her apartment but after that week I went and knocked on her door. My hands went sweaty and my face ran hot as I waited for Nara to answer and tell me what changed. Instead, a man opened the door.
I was falling in love with her.
“Hello” he said.
“Hi…” I said back.
“Are you looking for Nara?” He asked me.
“Yes, is she here?” I said sheepishly.
“Yeah let me grab her… -hey babe, somebody is at the door for you.” He said smiling kindly to me then walking out of view.
My heart dropped through me to the floor like a brick.
Nara came to the door and closed it behind her. She stood leaning against her door and I against the wall across from her. We looked at each other for a long moment before she looked down at her hands woven together and choked up trying to speak.
~
“Turns out Nara was married.”
“What?! No way. And you never knew?” She said.
“Nope. She left the states to “re-evaluate” things. Apparently they got married right out of high school and she felt suffocated by it all. Either way, her husband came to bring her home and that’s exactly what he did.”
“So she just left? And that’s it?”
“Yeah that’s it. I spent another month in Tokyo before taking another writing job in New Zealand and that was that.” I said huffing out like I just removed a splinter.
She inched closer to me and grabbed my head pulling it into her chest. “I’m so sorry I asked. That’s awful. Do you still think about her?”
I thought about it, not sure of how I was going to answer. It’s tough, abandoning love and hoping that the same intensity of lust and passion will catch like fire inside you again. Emulation is a cheap trick when it comes to matters of the heart.
As I looked back at her, into her pale green eyes, I hated myself.