So there was more

(I wrote this exactly one year ago, but never posted it.)

It was Saturday, and despite efforts to convince people otherwise, no one ended dressing up for the showing of Sith. No! Nooooo! Still, we crammed the people in and afterwards went to Rengaya. We carried the remnants of our drinks down to the castle and drank together in the dark, under 47 stone statues. Swords casting bizarre shadows in the gloom. It was close to twelve went an old woman shuffled past, pushing a shopping trolley filled with onions. She was talking to herself, but I couldn’t catch anything she said.

We let S make drinks, and very shortly the drunkenness went terminal. Even as Velvet Goldmine spluttered to itself in the corner, people were dropping fast. “Listen, a real artist creates beautiful things and puts nothing of his own life into them, OK?” OK. OK. I’ll just sleep here. Rubik’s cube is very frustrating. Are you done throwing up?

Sabotage Ako was planned for Sunday, I’d done the poster, Nick had done the promotion, it was all set to be a great day in the sun. Bands, booze and a Ferris wheel. And then it rained. And rained. And rained.

So we ran with it and cycled down to the tiny school just down the road from Glebe’s with a soccer ball and desire to run until we burned. We played until we couldn’t and then, just like kids, every successive goal became the last one. The final. The decider. We were the champions of the school. The champions of the world. The galaxy. The universe. Nothing could contain us.

Standing in the middle of an empty sandbox, the rain thudding into the wet dirt as I juggled the ball with sodden feet, I felt invincible.

That night, I should have been sleeping on a train headed east, but instead I sat in Mos Burger by myself for an hour and thought about what I was going to do.

Paone closes late, but that night when I walked past, it had closed already.

Posted in Japan on Thursday July 13, 2006.