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PaperclipPerfector
9mo ago
(text post)
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Notes -
Part Deux of this post
The return commute from work is more hectic--the crepuscular calm of the 5:03 (edit: I realize belatedly that crepuscular actually means twilight, which would be the opposite of dawn, but I am not changing it because I like the consonance.) is miles away from the rush hour bustle of the late afternoon trains--I avoid the buses on this end, usually walking the leisurely half hour to the station, then again walking home on the last leg, which takes about 20 minutes. I do a lot of walking, every day. I have come to understand that although walking burns just as many calories as running (at least in the brief walks I take), it doesn't provide any real sort of cardio unless the walk is strenuous, and even then, once you reach a certain threshold, in order to get the benefits you may want you probably have to go ahead and run. I don't. It's just too damn hot.
We are in summer now. Started June 21st. It hit 90 on my walk to the first return station the other day. I had foregone the jacket and tie for a polo shirt like Daniel Craig in Haiti in the misjudged and underrated film Quantum of Solace. When I am LARPing in that particular getup I like to scrape my keys off the table in Craig fashion, and wait patiently for someone to ask if someone is a friend of mine, so I can remark without humor: "I don't have any friends." As it happens I do, but the line was a good one. If you haven't seen the movie you have no idea what I'm on about.
The first train ride takes me to a commuter hub, where you can actually travel to one of the international airports in my area. You see a lot of Chinese, Korean, Thai, probably other Asians as well. I recognize the first three first on dress and style, then usually on language--I don't understand Chinese, Korean, or Thai, but I know them when I hear them. The Chinese tend to sit on the train expansively, two members of the family on one side, two others on the other. They speak in regular speaking tones on the train. They don't make themselves small or seem to care if anyone else needs a seat (perhaps they do care, and care very much, but they don't show it in any way I can understand.) The Koreans are usually wearing expensive watches and rather fashionable clothes, if of a sort of nouveau riche type often with conspicuous labels and such (very similar to many Japanese, though the labels are slightly different), and have smart haircuts and very well done plastic surgery, in particular the women. The Thais are louder and fewer, and probably much more fun to talk to. Often any of the above will, if I scootch over (my computer is telling me scootch is not a word--maybe I am spelling it wrong?) anyway if I move over they will say "Thank you," to me in very well-pronounced English. Japanese people never respond to me in English--well, almost never.
Once I am at the hub I stride purposefully through the crowds--I have learned over the years to walk quickly and with confidence through massive crowds, like a character in an action film who finds himself in a rousing nightclub--you ignore everyone and everything around you, no matter how interesting, and push your way through as if towards something much more important than the carnal rabble writhing around you. I take a subway, which takes me past the oldest brothel district in this part of Japan, and one of the oldest in the country. If I am lucky, one of the girls has just finished and is getting on the subway home--she will be wearing something either very provocative and ignore everyone--once I saw a girl in a tan/flesh-colored skin-tight one-piece wearing a fucking bucket hat--or will be with another girl and wearing clothes that are almost nondescript, but I always know. Or convince myself that i do. Once I am positive I saw a girl headed to work, though if you were to pin me and ask me "How could you possibly know?" my best answer would be Intuition.
The brothel district is a long street which, at night, has poles with white globes on them. There is a poster on the side of at least one building which says something similar to "Let's keep our brothel district clean!" There is a police box one block outside the district, and police on bicycles cruising through are not unheard of. There is a rather massive apartment complex just east of this block or two of whorehouses, and if you were enterprising and lived in these apartments nothing really would stop you from buying a telescope and camera and documenting exactly who comes and goes. But it's Japan, and something tells me no one does this. I probably would, just as a diversion.
I wrote that it's a street. It's not, really, it's a block or two of parallel streets. These have nicknames, if you must know. One is known as 青春通り (seishun doori or "youth street"). Here you will find girls who are very likely university students somewhere (probably somewhere at least mildly distant) and who are making some extra cash. The signs say the smallest amount of time you can pay for is a 20-minute booking. I have had a discussion with one of these girls, and learned that she gets 60% of whatever is paid. For 20 minutes the price the last time I bothered to look was 16,000 yen, which is roughly 115 USD at current exchange rates.
You walk down the street and you see the genkans--which means the doorway where in a normal house you'd take your shoes off and hang your coat. In these establishments the genkan is open to the air, and while there is a place to put your shoes, instead of a coatrack you will see a girl sitting in a zaisu, a chair flush to the ground with a back, and she may have a blanket modestly draped over her thighs if it's cold. If not, she may be in a bikini, may be dressed like some sort of fairy, may be in a maid's costume, a balldress, even, yes, and you knew this was coming--a high school uniform. In other words, some type of thing that is geared toward the fetish/fantasy of the dudes who end up here. And Japan is nothing if not a fetish/fantasy wonderland. Or cesspool, depending of course on one's perspective. What is remarkable to me is that the times I have beheld this tableau the women have almost all been strikingly beautiful.
Anyway. I don't want to bog this account of my commute down too much with prurient description of the brothel area. I am by no means an expert on the area but I probably know more than a lot of people simply because I have lived here so long, have walked down the street several times, etc. (These stories are less interesting than they probably sound.) Anyway I will leave this whole part of the story in stasis for now. Thank Christ for anonymity online--I only mention any of this because no one on here knows who the hell I am. One reason I like the "privacy" filter or whatever it is. I used to write all sorts of stories on reddit and have now deleted them all (in as much as reddit would allow me). For a long time I liked writing about my life, and I was approached by randos in DMs asking to use my stories in their podcasts. I always agreed with one caveat: Tell me where I can listen to it. They always agreed. And none of them ever got back to me.
Subway takes me to yet another train--my first of the morning, last of the day. Again, in the late afternoon it is very crowded. If I go at a certain time of day and board the right car there is a woman with what I am sure is Proteus syndrome, or what they suspect Joseph Merrick had--her face is incredibly, implausibly distorted. I expect the COVID wave of mask-wearing was a boon for her. She wears a prim blouse and either a skirt or slacks of some sort, and has a bag, and always stands and faces the door, perhaps so she doesn't have to look across the aisle and pretend she doesn't notice everyone forcing themselves not to acknowledge her.
The cars are almost always crowded. There is one woman who always gets on the same car as I do if I have timed it wrong, and she will lunge for any empty seat like a jackal for a wounded bird. Opportunistic bitch. I do not say this. Like everyone else, I stare into the middle distance, or at my phone, or wherever else is convenient to not acknowledge the actions of others. I often will wave another to a seat that comes available and which is within my ass-reach. I have some sort of mental scale which tells me whether I should just sit down or give the seat to someone else. I am sure if I were more Motte-y I would calibrate exactly what quantitative values I weigh in my head in this process. I'm not going to.
When I get to my terminus station I always see two women, striking in their beauty, whose lives appear to be in the reverse order of mine--which is to say where I am going to they are coming from, and vice versa. I wonder if anyone ever notices me in this way. Neither of these women ever look at me and I never say a word to either of them nor do I acknowledge them in any way. But they are milestones on my daily journey. And, oddly, I notice if they aren't there on some days. A cold, perhaps.
Thank you. How was your writing when you started? Has it improved a lot or did you start from a high base?
Thanks for your comment. As I have said elsewhere I'm old, so when I started I was about 13, and that was a lifetime ago. I assume I've improved--I know I'm slightly less sentimental. I had really good writing teachers as a younger man, until suddenly they became shit around 1995 and I stopped taking such electives. I wouldn't have continued if I thought I wasn't any good.
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