June 18th, 2004
108750900494258505
11/14/03
A night alone at One’s
So I’m sitting in the Sendagaya equivalent of the Italian Villa, a late night grease joint some ten thousand miles away. We had our company annual meeting today, so instead of toiling away until eleven on hana-kin, I got out of dinner at a Korean restaurant in Okubo at quarter to ten. I was (am) quite tired, but the sharp November air and the lights of Kabukicho jolted me awake, and feeling slightly defiant in my solitude, I decided to spend a little time outside my stuffy, dirty room and have a drink. I really didn’t eat much at dinner since I was fighting a lousy mood from fatigue and seven hours of listening to Japanese. I have a gin rickey and a couple of assorted nuts now, with one of One’s oddly oversized American burgers on the way.
I used to complain of not having anyone to do things with, but now with work I hardly find time to do anything period. I guess something has to give, because I can’t maintain this quality of life for much longer. My current theory is less (but better) sleep. This may be induced by forcing myself to run (in the morning or night, I haven’t decided which is better), and more, western style, balanced, self-made meals.
It used to bother me that none of my friends here ever called or asked me out. I’m too busy to notice much now. Perhaps they’re in the same boat. I need to make an effort though. I really don’t know anyone and Mom says I should meet more people. There really are dozens of opportunities. I just need to lay down the effort to take advantage.
As I said I’m drinking a gin rickey which is strange since I thought I swore off my once precious nectar after my third Sutler Stoplight somewhere off the coast of the Yucatan. However, time heals all wounds and stomach lining so Mr. Tanqueray or in this case, Beefeater, and I have made up over the common ground of time and co-dependency (I depend on the gin to get me drunk, the gin depends on me to drink it).
This place must use digital or net radio or something because I’ve heard local stations as well as San Francisco natives. Tonight we’ve got megamedia Virginia Radio from London (I think it’s about two or three in the afternoon there). I kind of miss the keggers and the hazy hookup parties from Virginia. By fourth year Brandon was almost never around for our sorted nocturnal adventures, so more than a few times I found myself leaving a Theta Tau quasi-party of conservatives and cynics, and around the corner at my inebriated redneck of an acquaintance Ned’s. Amusement there was swimming in cooler chests of everclear punch, beer pong, and spin the bottle (which always led to Ned moaning, half-conscious on his bed as multiple women rubbed his crotch). I picked up my pair of handcuffs at one of those parties and have gleefully carried them through customs many times since.
By this time in college I’d decided I’d had enough of trying to be perfect [this was later repealed], and I spent three or four of my weeknights drunk, scouring Lambeth, Rugby, or first year dorms for some kind of vacuous indulgence. I consider the time from the summer of 2000 to the fall of 2001 my heyday: the journeyman’s blue collared, signet ring, and Seahawks’ hat-wearing celebrity, as I’ve said before.
Buddha teaches the impermanence of everything, and how misery springs from resisting change. To further douse me in confusion as to how I should be living now and old Verve song has come on the radio and I can’t fight the rising torrent of melancholy nostalgia from nights spent with one foot in heaven and the other nestling silk sheets, with a delicate featured, literary fox in my arms. Truly, great joy ultimately brings great pain.
11:12p
Well, there’s a six hundred yen bottle of 7-11 wine aging in my room, but for some reason I felt compelled to go to another bar. Well, One’s isn’t a bar, but a dark place to drink where someone else puts the liquor in your glass (you’re not so guilty this way). I’m having another gin rickey, but this time I’m making up with Mr. Tanqueray directly (it’s been long enough). Cheers.
I find Tanqueray does not a gin rickey make. While it’s smoother and milder than the Beefeater, I think that’s the problem. There are peanuts in my snack bowl this time. I could ask them to replace it with a quarantined bowl, but I don’t feel like causing trouble. I’ll just eat around them. Hopefully contact with the other nuts won’t make me keel over and die. My bike’s outside and only half locked up-
It’s bright and noisier in here than last time (there’s jazz music). What’s guy gotta do to find a dank pit with all wood furnishing? I think the nuts are bad news maybe I’ll eat the almonds, but the rest are my mortal enemies.
11:24
Like most boys[bugs?] I’m growing up and evolving. In this case thirteen minutes have given me a gin tonic and Bombay Sapphire. Tycho talks about it a lot so it’s gotta be good. He drinks a bunch, I know wisdom comes from experience. This is sweeter than the rickey, but it still has lime and comes in the same glass. It’s tasting even less like alcohol, I must be doing something wrong. Or maybe that’s just the last two setting me up.
The almonds taste like peanuts. Better finish the tonic and get out of here before I die in all denim.
11:36
The last tab for two drinks at the not so dark joint was sixteen eighty with tax and cover. Which is pretty normal for one of the largest cities in the world. The price list says five hundred, but it always ends up being more. Whatever. When you work fifteen hours a day there’s little time to spend money. I’m now at Jam, shady and with fewer customers than the last place but noisy. Rounding out the gin spectrum I ordered a gin buck with Gordon’s. This has as much bite as the first Beefeater rickey, but it’s also sweet like the Tanqueray. I’m becoming a connoisseur in a matter of minutes. I ordered the gin buck because it made me think of one of my archetypes, Joe Buck; though there’s very little Midnight Cowboy about this place (it’s actually burning up). The only thing even remotely American is a photo of a man and a woman looking in a mirror at a park with an Andy Warhol quote taped on. “My feeling is that the only way to make things better is by showing how good things can be.”
I’m in trouble. I just sighted my death sentence on the top shelf. Though fully familiar with the chemistry of real absinthe, I still abhor/love Pernod. Here goes the night…
I used to have a girlfriend that loved three things: Pernod, Stolichnaya, and the other I’ll keep a secret. As the odor of green death radiates from the glass on my table, I know the rush it will bring in a few seconds. This stuff sets my body on fire even with a stomach full of carbs. And I still have half of my Jon Voight to kill. If licorice were a demon from the nether world, it would strike from a long glass pill box. [Absolutely no idea.]
I don’t envy myself the experience starting in ten-fifteen minutes. I’d better get some bread and go home.
