Halloween

On the morning of Halloween after waking, sitting at my computer, I did something awful! Something so, so terrible! Of course I’ve done it before in my life, but I was in grade school then when it happened. Of course I’ll tell you, reader. But to save the rest of my story, I can’t say yet.
By bike, I went to the annual performance arts festival at my university after having the yogurt and toast breakfast with Misui-san. We went together. I was full from breakfast, but still, walking through the food stands and the shouting, Misui-san bought each of us (first) a chocolate cookie thing, then a little pancake/beef sandwich, and then shish kabob sticks. We split up after watching the Jazz Club and an air-instrument (no instruments) band lip synch to a set songs for a giant, smirking audience.
I saw a parade that changed me just afterward at the festival. Forty hands coming from glittering green sleeves were ticking on so many drums and cowbells, and shaking full, rectangle tambourines up and down forever so fast. It was Mardigras. There were the king and queen, in giant, wedding-cake dresses and headdresses and holding staffs and carrying smiles, and spinning like bubbles. There were the almost naked half-bird girls dancing to mime each tiny tick of the 100 tiny hands’ beat (just as there are). I thought to myself, when this stops I wont know what to do. When it did, I felt good.
It had gotten dark. I rode home on my bike. From there, I could’ve ended up staying home, but I met Svienn in Asagaya, and then went to Roppongi to go to a live art/music/DJ dance party in a basement club for only 1000 yen. On our way to Roppongi, Halloween became more and more obvious. The foreigners were routy. The white-bald man we saw lifting his crutches up to the sky before later nearly fell into a moving train on its way out. Someone pulled him back. I didn’t know whether to feel glad or not. On the street outside of the station a Nigerian solicitor picked up our steps, ‘All you can drink! All you can watch! All you can touch!’ The place was magnificent. The gigantic Hills Plaza, built as a commune, has everything you need. We came upon a small shrine while looking for a place to drink my bottle of vodka off of the main street, 'Shall we bless our hands?' Svienn. We did. We didn't drink there. The club was underneath ground, and was kind and cozy and intimate, and dark. Giant projector images danced on the walls to glitch DJ music. The music was invigorating. While the place was still spacious, we watched the creation of an art piece on the wall done by a group of people. The hot, intelligent, independent art girl with a mustache drawn on her upper lip drew phrases in the spaces between black lines, ‘the pain necessary for growth.’ Admiring everything, I met Tomo, dressed like a gentleman. He had been living in San Francisco for 10 years and just returned to Tokyo in March. We both liked the idea of making friends. I met a tall white guy from Stratford-Upon-Avon, England; Shakespeare’s birthplace. He says there are so many right-wing American tourists, it’s like a red state. It’s the first place they go. He says he’s almost been to Washington. He was driving up the coast having sex with this yoga instructor and when she told him she had a boyfriend, he was in Oregon. ‘Two hours of crying and I was alright, but I didn’t have enough money to go on, so I went back to California.’ I thought I understood. I didn’t see him after that. Three hours pass and so much has happened. A rapper rapped in his crunchy voice, a three-piece wearing native American clothing and screaming and being two guys and one little, monstrous, terribly cute, screaming, wailing, chirping girl. The DJ music went on after that when I started receiving wine from the girl with green hair. She would dance close to me with a glass and then turn and hold it up to me and say in my ear, ‘White wine.’ I drank a little each time and smiled. In my head, I thought that I wouldn’t have minded it if she had drugged me and stole me away. Svienn, by the way, has been the coolest club partner there is. I look over at him and he’s looking forward at the video artwork with his upper body pumping forward ten centimeters and then back the same distance and hammering over and over and doing it so genuinely, this move, with such intelligence. I haven’t found a way to describe it. Anyway, when he notices I’m checking on him his eyes move to their corners on my side as if to say, I think, something like, ‘Cool, huh?’ The girl with the green hair moves away. Maybe I didn't show enough interest? She gets with a tall Japanese wizard. Svienn and I leave the club after seven hours of dancing. We leave the green haired girl and the wizard. Outside, there are a beautiful Japanese girl that says hi to me, there are angry foreigners that want to fight each other. Svienn and I sit waiting for the subway. On the subway car packed with drunk and tired 18 to 35, the first stop takes on an old fisherman with his net. He squeezes through the young girls, his short stature. On the next stop, his net is caught on someone who tries to get off! He’s fighting it with his strong old hands! To get the net off this girls purse who is leaving and the train doesn't know so it will leave! He rips his netting apart and frees the girl wearing sexy leggings. When I get back to my bike at Musashi-sakai station, the pale sun is rising. I scooped up the dew that had collapsed overnight on my bike seat.
Well that's it. Oh, that thing I was going to say. ...I can't say it! I'm sorry, reader.