Tokio Whip (11 page)

***

Merchants – the way they kowtow still – what a legacy! Like in Mizoguchi.

***

–
It was the crazy lady's birthday today.

–
The “translator's”?

–
No, the other crazy lady – the one at the Indian restaurant. There were flowers all over the place; three bunches arrived just during my lunch.

–
Sounds like the crazy lady is loved. Why, by the way, are there so many Indian restaurants in Tokyo?

***

What did all that flesh mean then? Her thin legs, long neck, small breasts? A glimpse of what? What train line?

***

THE ARTICULATION OF A NEED / THE DESIRE TO DESIRE

It begins with those moments of moral cowardice and continues with social and artistic posturing, rank arrogance in the face of others' genuine modesty, and more and on, but, moral cowardice above all – these have left us wrecks, wrecks aesthetic, human and otherwise – had it not been for some few friends and the mutual recognition that our destinies, yours, mine, those of these friends, are all somehow conjuncted, and even and only as we acknowledge them – alone, together – might we ever see them through – plus the notion, foolish perhaps but there, of our charting of some new moral, aesthetic and amorous territory – and that this awaits us all – is this what attracts us all one to another, Marianne?

A chance to articulate a need that has been so long hidden and unsaid; and given our mutual and individual histories, dreams, and conversations, erotic, philosophic, cinematographic, and all the other arts at our disposal (conversations made too often of broken sentences, long silences of unheard speech) – these will see us through, fully forward, incorporating all within a single body, shining and unbreakable, a mutual, commingling and consubstantial body of gratified memory, need and desire (everything vertical!) –– Marianne: is it possible?

***

I saw a child in a crowded ceramics shop, Arlene recalls, something dropped, a cup or vase or some such object. The shop owner came up to the mother and apologized to her for having been so foolish as to have put a delicate piece in the way of a child. He then gave the kid a piece of candy. The mother slightly scolded her child. Now you
know
you would never see that happen in any other country.

***

–
Zonar – is that what Cafferty told us to look out for?

–
Sounds like a porno star – the snake-lady – no, that was Zora –

–
Whoosh!, through the glass you replicant.

–
But what is this place?

–
God-awful. The groves of the nation's future leaders. Typical Tokyo campus: fast food,
pachinko
, Mom and Pop shops. You go down Kagurazaka – hey, I had a dream about a “Number 14-Slope” recently! – and Miracle Queen, an ice cream and perfume shop, does it still flourish? – so … you go down past the SDF

–
If you can – you're getting a little shakey there, VZ.

–
Had a bit too much?

–
Me?

–
You thought you could make it to Roberta's from Kagurazaka, huh?

–
Wait, now where was I? Oh yeah: ya' know, Mishima's last meal was in Shimbashi, he did himself in ... no, it wasn't here – look, from the bottom of one bowl to – look! – that light on the river and those trees: the city disappears! – like in Ochanomizu – and past that apartment building with a swimming pool, no less! – there's the bottom of the other bowl.

–
Man, what's he talking about?

–
Beats me. Memories, I guess.

–
Half made up, it sounds to me.

–
Nah, not VZ, he's got a lot of shit we ain't half aware of.

–
Ichigaya, the Spanish bookstore – did the Italian one move from Jimbocho, or just close? – up a bowl and down – voilá – Yotsuya!

–
Like I said, a lot of shit.

***

Why did they take that cruise round the world? Couldn't they just have taken a walk across the city?

***

Arlene is in grade-school. Puberty. The classroom is large. For twelve- and thirteen year-olds, these kids seem to be adult-sized. The boys are either extra-shy, or they are crudely attempting to raise the girls' skirts. Typical classroom chaos. Arlene sits at her desk, observing the teacher who has no control whatsoever over his students. Arlene's glance goes from one boy to another; in between, she focuses on a couple of the older girl students. No one talks to her. She is curious, and not unhappy as she rubs herself. A glance out the window shows her shopping arcades, pachinko parlors, people dressed as film actors; in between the public announcements exhorting shoppers she catches snatches of the voice of Billie Holiday accompanied by Lester Young.

That evening, Van Zandt had gotten drunk on tequila at a gallery reception for an exhibition of drawings by Mika Yoshizawa. In the background Billie Holiday records were playing. The reception had been held in Kamata, the former Hollywood of Japan. Lang had once “explained” Yoshizawa's work to VZ. In his dream, VZ is still at the reception where so many young Japanese women seem to be walking in circles around him as he tries to cut a path across them in order to talk with one in particular who is talking with Lang about Yoshizawa. The work, like eyes and breasts and machine parts or instruments to be employed in sacred and/or sexual rituals whirl around VZ. The Kamata associations don't help. As he sleeps he is aware that he is drunk, and he is happy about it, except for the gnawing frustration he feels at his inability to reach the woman whom he feels genuinely attracted to. When he wakes up he thinks that a Yoshizawa drawing of a circle whose right half is taken up by a circle whose right half is taken up by a circle could also resemble Tokyo whose right half is taken up by the Yamanote loop whose right half is taken up by the Palace. Tokyo then as an eye, a breast, a Mika Yoshizawa drawing.

***

brown walls

behind blue curtains

fragile world

fragile woman

blown walls

beneath blue tiles

***

Of all the shops she loved, she loved this one best.

***

R'n'L!!!!

There are more than 2,000 magazines titles published in Tokyo. Isn't that a happy thought? And then their titles!

I've ordered my new computer but it doesn't arrive for a few weeks, and I am almost paranoid to do anything on this one on its last legs. Ya know, my favorite button used to be “delete,” but now it's “Yes to all.”

Ya' know, the other day I realized that in the last couple of years I have attended one funeral (Ikuko), two weddings, and half a dozen couple friends have had kids. Not too bad for the Life Goes On [or Doesn't] Dept.

Song of the Week: “Bossa Nova Baby” (1963), with these immortal lyrics:

I said, Hey Little Mama, let's sit down, have a drink and dig the band.

She said, Drink, drink, drink, oh fiddleydink, I can dance with a drink in my hand.

She said, Hey Bossa Nova Baby, keep on workin,' ‘cos I ain't got time to drink.

She said, Hey Bossa Nova Baby, keep on dancin,' ‘cos I ain't got time to think.

Oh, Ann Margaret, we love you!

A style to accommodate chaos – that's what we want here.

Parentheses, like vaginas (and both, like the city), are a matter of lips opening and closing, quivering if you like, all the meanwhile maintaining their delicate order within the frenzy of all they are expressing. I limit myself to three on either side (Roussel's five!) and then work my way back in. Anyway, but how do you explain this to anyone? “Hey, Roberta, Lang, what's new?” “Oh, we were just talking about parentheses, vaginas and quoting songs in letters.” “Oh, I see, heh-heh.” Vaginally then, like some etymology, I unfold myself to you.

Cary and Carole together in one great movie! The missing link to human happiness.

Ok, how's this for a photo project. I was talking with Junko about the three portraits idea and it suddenly occurred to me: “What about all my other friends?” So I thought about taking photos of 'em all when we go to our fave bars, and calling the thing
Tokyo Twists and Hardons
, “twist” of course being gangster slang for a broad, uhn, I mean a dame, uhn, I mean a chick, uhn I mean a girl, uhn – hell, what do I mean, anyway?, and “hardon” being the same for a prick, uhn I mean a guy, uhn, I mean ...

Which reminds me: years ago when I got my first 8mm camera, this camera store had a kind of amateur night. (Very) amateur models would prance around and the equally amateur photogs [ugh, I mean, I hate that word, but I equally hate typing out the whole thing – maybe I can make a macro out of it, anyway:] would shoot 'em. Anyway, I attended, and shot. Then I shot a lot of cranes around the city – and you know how I love cranes. Then I tried ever so ineptly to edit it all together in a quasi-structuralist manner. And what did I call it? Why
Guys and Dolls
, of course.

Am beginning to think that
My Darling Clementine
is my all-time fave Western; and besides, Fonda – “with a portrait as beautiful as his who wants true?” – surely has the most beautiful walk (among men) in the movies.

February is the cruellest month. Why?, you ask. Because
Movieline
doesn't come out then. I think it's my fave mag, along with
October
.

Crime of M. Lange
tonight. Wanna see it with me?

***

Why was I so graced?, I ask myself. An eighty-year old man spoke with me on the train home about his collection of Chinese ceramics, “nothing later than Ming, of course.” Why so graced to forget you for thirty minutes? Such grace – all? – so short.

***

They make porno films on bridges and crosswalks; the buxom woman crosses Sukiyabashi on the diagonal; three takes just to get it right. Bouncey bouncey.

***

The costs of confusion notwithstanding, Kazuo thinks to himself, to think one's way through Tokyo is not unlike mastering any of the finer arts. I remember my first lessons in calligraphy. My parents, bless them, had insisted that I remain left-handed. And so, it was like a new language. My arm just swept across the sheet. And I am forever grateful to my teacher for starting me on
sho
instead of
kai
, to let me be fluid, never being sure what I was writing, but writing it well. Did those calligraphy lessons free me to understand the Tokyo system better? Perhaps.

***

How many more years raping his life?

***

SCENE FOUR: SHINJUKU STATION

Refreshed and disoriented, she is in Shinjuku Station. She feels like a newcomer to Tokyo. Takes twenty minutes to find an exit, climbs some stairs, and gazes on a three-story high television screen. Some Pop star is advertising “Godzilla Condoms.” She walks back down, takes another exit, and for a moment thinks herself in a Post-Modern Paris. She gazes on the towers of Notre Dame, the new Tokyo City Hall, and reminds herself that she has to get tickets to
Les Miserables
, and will have to go alone because all of her friends think it's tacky. Musicals are a developed taste. “Hugo? Who's Hugo?,” she wonders, a rambunctious boy, a hunchbank, a clothes designer. She walks back down, takes another exit and faces a porno cinema. She enters. The familiar scum and cum. A man in the third row wears a gray felt hat. Why has he thrown his jacket over himself? Oh, yes, of course. She goes up to him. “Excuse me?” He looks at her – comes – asks, awkwardly, how he can help her. She mumbles some excuse to get away as fast as possible. Definitely not her man.