Posted on by Matt Thomas

The Days and Nights of the 50s, 7/25/26. He Gets on Base.

Epigraphs:

So you wanna get out?
Let me draw a map

–Superchunk

Good sex it never makes you feel hollow
Good sex it never makes you clean

–Kevin Drew

I watched your face die backwards
Little baby in my memory
You told me victory’s sweet
Even deep in the cheap seats

–Conor Obrest

I. Morning

I slept better than I have in a long time. As best as I can recall, I went to bed around 12:40 AM. and woke up around 6:40 AM. Six hours is not necessarily a full night’s sleep, but lately it has felt like a luxury. I woke up clear-headed, made coffee in my room, and headed down to the Lawson around the corner for another one. I picked up some potato chips while I was there, wandered back to the hotel, and settled into the morning.

The first order of business was practical. I checked my messages, replied to my son Hugh, and told him I’d be happy to swing by home on Monday as long as he let me know what time he expected to be home. “Love, Papa,” as always. I checked in on Elliott as well. Nothing had changed. As of this writing, we’re still meeting at 6:30 this evening at a beer bar in southern Osaka, and I am looking forward to it.

Once these logistics were out of the way, my mind drifted, as it sometimes does, toward movies and television.

I started thinking about The Sopranos. I’ve watched this show all the way through twice, and I’ve revisited a number of episodes over the years. I think James Gandolfini and Michael Imperioli both give remarkable performances, and there are many individual scenes I genuinely love. Even so, I’ve gradually realised that David Chase’s aesthetic simply isn’t mine. Whether the repetition is intentional or not—and I suspect it is—I find both the storytelling and the character arcs to be cyclical.

The performances remain compelling, but the show continually circles back over the same emotional territory. I understand why so many people consider it one of the greatest television dramas ever made. I don’t. I like it and I’m glad I watched it, but I don’t imagine I’ll ever watch the series again.

Thinking about The Sopranos naturally led me to the dialogue that has stayed with me over the years. Not necessarily the greatest lines ever written, but the ones I find myself returning to.

Roger Wade, in The Long Goodbye, pours two glasses of anisette and says to Philip Marlowe, “Take that goddamn J. C. Penney tie off.”

Marlowe calmly replies, “I’m happy to drink with you, but I’m not taking my tie off.”

I don’t know why I love that exchange so much, but I always have.

Another favorite comes from Godfather II. Michael Corleone’s sister comes to him with her new boyfriend Merle to ask Michael for money.

“Connie, I don’t know this Merle. I don’t know what he does. I don’t know what he lives on. Tell him you’re never going to see him again, and come and live with me in Tahoe.” She does of course. It’s funny, oddly romantic, a little menacing, and super funny.

Then there’s The Wire. Bodie has always been my favourite character, and one of my favourite exchanges comes in Seasons 3 shortly after Cutty gets out of prison.

“I’m surprised Avon lets y’all get your heads up.”

Bodie shrugs.

“Sometimes you got to.”

Four words. An entire philosophy.

Seinfeld contributes one as well. Kramer proudly shows Jerry his silk boxer shorts and encourages him to buy a pair. Jerry politely declines.

“No thank you. They’re just a little too delectable for me.”

Perfect.

Finally, there’s Michael Clayton. Arthur Edens has come apart at the seams strips off in the deposition room. Michael flies to Wisconsin to rescue him, and after a brief argument simply says,

“Let’s get out of Milwaukee and we’ll talk about it.”

Sometimes a single sentence can contain an entire friendship.

As I thought about these great quotes, I realized something that hadn’t quite crystallized before. I don’t dislike slow films. I dislike static ones. I love Tarkovsky, but I don’t love all of Tarkovsky equally. Mirror and Stalker feel alive to me. Nostalghia does not. Likewise, I don’t need constant action, but I do need movement—emotional, philosophical, psychological, narrative. I want to feel that a story is becoming something different from where it began.

That, I think, is the aesthetic I’m really chasing. After that my thoughts wandered to Craig Finn, the singer-songwriter who heads the Hold Steady.

The first Hold Steady song I ever heard was “Sequestered in Memphis.” At the time I misunderstood the entire premise. I thought the narrator was giving an interview to a journalist rather than being questioned by the police. Looking back, it seems obvious, but it never occurred to me then.

What always stayed with me, though, was a single line:

In barlight she looked alright. In daylight she looked desperate.

I’ve know exactly what Craig means here. I’ve been there too.

By then the morning had slipped away from me. As of this writing, I’m still working on my essay, Am I Bisexual? It should probably have been published two days ago. It’s one of the more complicated pieces I’ve written in a while, and I’d rather finish the edit properly than rush it out simply to keep the daily streak alive.

The plan from here is straightforward. I’m going upstairs to keep editing for another hour or two. I’ll get organised, probably grab a short nap later this afternoon, and then head down to southern Osaka in plenty of time to meet Elliott at 6:30.

Everything else can wait.

II. Afternoon

By nine I’d finally stopped putzing about I was about to start. I rearranged the room one more time, put on Neil Halstead instead of Ryan Adams, then Ryan Adams instead of Neil Halstead, opened three browser tabs, closed two of them, looked at hotel dates, thought about escorts for exactly as long as I had promised myself I wouldn’t, and somehow convinced myself this counted as preparation.

It did, in a way. Every writer has their rituals. Mine mostly involve avoiding the sentence I’m about to write.

I remembered a much loved Superchunk lyric:

“So you wanna get out / well I’ll draw you a map.”

This turned out to be the whole morning. Dude if this place sucks so bad just jet. I’ll buy you and Amtrak ticket. Seriously bro. Hit the brinks.^

The next few days existed only as pencil marks: maybe Osaka until Monday, maybe longer, maybe Pattaya, maybe Litz, maybe Hugh, maybe Mio. None of it fixed. Just possible roads branching away from the same hotel room.

The night before, Litz had mentioned how much she loved the ending of piece I wrote about her. I had already mostly forgotten this part, so I took another look. It went like this:

The challenges in our relationship are the product of two imperfect people, each bringing old habits, old fears, old hopes, and old wounds into something new. This is not failure. It is simply the complicated business of being human.

I made it halfway through before I started crying. Not dramatic crying. Just enough that I had to stop reading. Sometimes a paragraph waits until you’re ready to understand what you wrote.

III. Early Evening:

Around 6:30 this evening, after working for about an hour and a half on the edit of yesterday’s journal, I walked a few minutes from my new hotel to a nearby convenience store to get something to drink.

Several hours earlier, I had texted my friend Elliott to ask whether he wanted to grab a drink tomorrow night. As I walked to the store, he replied that he was up for it and suggested a beer bar in southern Osaka. I told him I would meet him there.

Thinking about Elliott, I reflected on how much I admire his intelligence. I am a high school teacher, and Elliott used to be one of my colleagues. He left the school years ago and now tutors economics online and manages various investments. He also used to teach mathematics.

I am a social studies teacher. Over the years, I have taught a wide variety of classes, and I feel that I could adequately instruct students in almost any area of social studies. Elliott’s mathematical intelligence, however, has always struck me as remarkable.

In fact, I sometimes envy the mathematics teachers I have known, because mathematics is simply not one of my strengths. I was a decent math student for a time, but I hit the wall with calculus during my junior year of high school and never took another math class. Today, I almost never use mathematics except for the calculator on my phone and a little basic financial housekeeping.

This does not mean that Elliott is smarter than I am. I consider myself highly intelligent. Nonetheless, several times over the years, I have wondered whether he might indeed be smarter than me.

Thinking about it today, I realized that this is probably because his intelligence expresses itself very differently from mine. If I absolutely had to, I could probably relearn enough mathematics to teach middle school. That would be about my limit. Elliott is whip-smart and could probably teach most of the social studies classes I have taught without too much difficulty.

I often reflect on how strongly my intelligence expresses itself in certain areas of life, while in others I am essentially incompetent. I have a solid understanding of subjects such as history, politics, philosophy, psychology, religion, and metaphysics. However, I could not change a tire to save my life.

Although I am not exactly made of money, I almost always call a professional to handle household tasks such as fixing a faucet or clearing a drain. I find these jobs to be a tremendous hassle. In fact, they piss me off. I am happy to pay someone a few dollars to come and sort them out.

As I entered the convenience store, my thoughts turned to the screenwriter Aaron Sorkin. Sorkin is one of the greatest television and film writers of all time. I love The West Wing and The Social Network, and I have enjoyed much of his other work. For reasons of his own, however, Sorkin insists on directing some of his films.

He wrote and directed Molly’s Game. Molly’s Game sucks ass. The script is incomprehensible and all over the place. It is, without question, the worst piece of writing he has ever produced. The direction is equally terrible. The characterization is weak, the emotional beats are overdone, and the entire film is syrupy and sappy. I cannot stand it.

A second film of interest here is The Trial of the Chicago 7, which Sorkin also wrote and directed. The script is actually quite good, and the acting is strong. Once again, however, Sorkin’s direction is awful.

The film concerns the protests surrounding the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. I was not alive at the time, but my understanding is that thousands of protesters gathered in the city, largely in opposition to the Vietnam War and to the Democratic Party’s handling of it. The police responded with tear gas, clubs, arrests, and widespread violence. Some protesters fought back, and things became extremely ugly.

There are only a few major action sequences in the movie. Sorkin’s handling of them is pure trash. He has no idea how to direct physical chaos. The cameras are always in the wrong place. It is difficult to tell where anyone is or what is happening. The entire thing feels out of control, and not in an intentional way.

Molly’s Game is a bad movie, and I do not care. The Trial of the Chicago 7 could have been a good movie with competent direction. Sorkin was simply not the man for the job.

As I walked back to my hotel, I began thinking about how strange it is that otherwise intelligent people, for reasons of ego, ambition, or simple misjudgment, sometimes insist on doing things at which they are obviously bad.

Then I thought: Well, I have probably done this too.

There have certainly been times when I believed I could handle something and ended up over my skis. I suspect this is true of everyone. We all have strengths and weaknesses, and intelligence manifests itself in different ways.

Over time, I have tried to learn how to pick my spots and stay in my lane. I do not always succeed. However, I hope I do a better job of it than Aaron Sorkin.

IV: Evening Back at My Hotel

As I walked to the train station to go meet Elliot I called Annie. Annie has always been completely outta control, and she absolutely loves it. Within five minutes she’d decided to crash her ex-husband’s wedding in a tent, seduce one of the guests, reminisced about working at Spokane’s Mars Casino, told me stories involving cocaine, dresses, gambling, and an older gay man who’d taught her “everything about sex,” invited me to her hypothetical future wedding, and, after I jokingly suggested we skip straight to sex ourselves, said she’d think about it. Talking to Annie has always been like standing beside a fire hose. The stories don’t really have beginnings or endings. They simply arrive.

The morning passed quietly. I answered a message from my brother Hugh, who was planning to stop by the house in Kyoto sometime during the coming week, and sent a few encouraging replies to several women I’d been chatting with online. One woman in the Philippines was hoping to find work overseas in Singapore or Malaysia. Another, somewhere in Thailand, simply wanted to know how my morning was going. Others had drifted into that peculiar limbo occupied by most dating-app conversations: friendly enough to continue, but unlikely ever to become anything more.

After a while I found myself scrolling through far more conversations than I probably should have. Dating apps create the illusion that your social world is constantly expanding, when in reality most interactions simply fade away after a few messages. Every now and then somebody surprises you, but most conversations end not with an argument or rejection, but with simple inertia. Nobody does anything wrong. Life just moves on.

Perhaps that’s why I no longer find the process frustrating. Years ago I probably would have chased every lead, replied to every message immediately, and wondered why nothing seemed to develop. These days I treat it more like browsing a bookstore than shopping for groceries. If something genuinely interesting appears, wonderful. If not, I’ll probably enjoy my coffee just as much.

My musical companion for the morning was Craig Finn. I first discovered him through “Sequestered in Memphis,” and, like many first-time listeners, completely misunderstood the song. I thought the narrator was speaking to a journalist after a reckless night in Memphis. Only later did I realize he was being questioned by the police. Somehow that misunderstanding didn’t lessen the song; if anything, it made me appreciate Finn’s writing even more. His characters are so vividly drawn that they feel real even when you’ve misunderstood the plot.

One line has always stayed with me: “In bar light she looked alright. In daylight she looked desperate.” Finn is ostensibly describing someone else, but the brilliance of the lyric is that it cuts both ways. By dawn, they’re both desperate. We’ve all had moments where the previous night’s confidence evaporates with the morning light. Finn simply found the perfect sentence to describe it.

V: On the Way to See Elliot

After finally giving up on the day’s editing, I showered, threw on a clean shirt, and hurried toward Taishō, where I was meeting Elliott at a craft beer pub called TNT. I was running a few minutes behind schedule—as usual—but Elliott has never struck me as the sort of person who minds waiting over a pint. I figured I’d make up the time somewhere between the hotel and the station, although experience suggested otherwise.

The train ride became one of those familiar periods of suspended possibility. While checking directions and changing lines, I also found myself checking dating apps, replying to messages, and idly wondering what the rest of the evening might bring. If everything went perfectly, I’d spend a few hours drinking good beer with Elliott, head back toward my hotel, and perhaps finish the night with a date. It wasn’t exactly a plan so much as several loosely connected possibilities competing for my attention.

Somewhere between stations my thoughts drifted to Tomoyo, one of my former students whom I’d seen again at the book launch. We’d nearly gone out together once before, years after she’d graduated, but circumstances had gotten in the way. Twenty years have now passed since I first taught her, which removes any ethical hesitation I might once have felt. I found myself wondering whether I should simply ask her out the next time I am in Tokyo. Sometimes life becomes unnecessarily complicated because we spend too much time calculating the odds instead of asking straightforward questions.

That seemed to be the theme of the journey. I checked my bank balance, priced a few possibilities for later that evening, briefly reconsidered future trips to Thailand and even South Korea, nearly walked the wrong way through a station, and at one point came within a few feet of being clipped by a taxi while jaywalking. None of it mattered very much. My mind was simply ricocheting from one possibility to another while my body steadily carried me toward a beer with a friend.

By the time I emerged from Taishō Station, the mental static had largely disappeared. Elliott was waiting, the pub was less than a minute away, and for the next few hours the only decision I intended to make was which beer to order first.

=====

The Osaka Loop Line has a hypnotic quality after a while. Every minute or two another calm recorded voice announces the next station, another transfer, another reminder to mind the gap. After ten or fifteen minutes the words stop meaning anything. They become part of the rhythm of the journey, almost musical, drifting in and out beneath whatever happens to be occupying your thoughts.

Mine, for reasons I still can’t explain, wandered toward negative igloos.

I have absolutely no idea what a negative igloo is. I have never knowingly encountered one before or since. It arrived fully formed, demanded my attention for perhaps fifteen seconds, and then disappeared forever, leaving me no wiser than before. If someone were to ask me today what a negative igloo might actually be, I honestly couldn’t begin to answer. Nonetheless, somewhere between Kitahama and Taishō, negative igloos briefly became the most important concept in my universe.

The rest of my brain was scarcely more coherent. Ryan Adams was singing Drank Like a River, and I found myself thinking about the tiny crack in his voice—that moment where it sounds less like he’s performing a song than remembering something he’d rather forget. Some singers sound polished. Ryan often sounds wounded. There’s a difference, and it’s one of the reasons I keep returning to his records.

Then, just as suddenly, I realized I had absolutely no idea where I was.

I’d somehow missed my stop, wandered out the wrong exit, and was now standing in a station that looked vaguely familiar while possessing almost no useful geographical knowledge whatsoever. Google Maps insisted I was only two minutes away from Elliott. My instincts insisted otherwise. My instincts, it should be noted, have an unfortunate habit of arguing with Google.

For a few minutes I experienced what I can only describe as a minor travel panic. Not real panic—nothing so dramatic—but that familiar sensation every traveller knows, where every street begins to resemble every other street and every directional arrow seems specifically designed to send you somewhere else. I walked one way, doubled back, checked Google again, ignored Google, trusted Google, ignored it again, and somehow managed to end up exactly where I’d started.

Meanwhile my thoughts continued their usual pinball routine. Was the Sony credit card finally on its way? Should I spend part of August in South Korea instead of Bali? Would Yo still be available later that evening? Why hadn’t Jennifer replied? Why did Meinster have time to send me promotional emails but apparently not royalty statements? None of these questions had anything whatsoever to do with finding a pub in Taishō, but my mind saw no reason to separate one subject from another.

Eventually I admitted defeat and messaged Elliott. Dude I am totally lost. His reply arrived almost immediately.

Where are you?

It was the perfect question because I genuinely didn’t know.

Google claimed I was standing practically on top of TNT Craft Beer Pub. My own eyes suggested I was standing outside an Irish bar that definitely wasn’t TNT. For a brief moment I began to wonder whether the pub existed only as a cartographical rumour.

I texted him back and said I was looking at Taisho Station. He said he would be right there. One minute later I saw him across the street and crossed to meet him.

When Elliott finally rescued me from my navigational incompetence, TNT turned out to be exactly where Google had insisted it was all along. The fault, as usual, lay somewhere between the phone and the human operating it.

“You’re hopeless,” he said.

“I prefer ‘geographically imaginative.'”

He laughed. “Come on.”

One minute later we were golden.

VI: TNT Craft Beer with Elliot

The pub was everything I hoped it would be: a long wooden bar, a dozen taps of rotating local craft beers, a cheerful bartender in a baseball cap who somehow managed to keep everybody’s glass full without ever looking hurried. When one of the kegs kicked halfway through pouring my pint, she apologized and handed me the remainder for free.

“Sorry” she said.

“No worries,” I said. “I’ll always take half a beer for free.”

She laughed.

“I like your hat,” I said.

“I get that a lot,” she said.

I turned to Elliot and asked if he wanted to hear a joke.

“A shepherd is in bed with his girlfriend for the first time. She asks him, ‘How experienced are you?’ He closes his eyes…starts counting…and falls asleep.”

The bartender laughed.

Elliott buried his face in his hands.

“Please,” he said, “never change.”

“I make no promises” I said.

By the time the quizmaster welcomed everyone, we’d accumulated enough empty glasses to suggest we were taking the evening seriously while simultaneously possessing almost no confidence in our ability to answer questions about anything.

“What’s are name?” Elliot asked me.

“How about the Glorious Mofos?”

“Of course.”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the quizmaster announced, “welcome!”

“He seems enthusiastic,” I whispered.

“He’s paid to be.”

We were spectacularly mediocre.

Spain had won something. Bananas were radioactive. Kobe Bryant was apparently named after Japanese beef. Beyond that we entered a sort of intellectual free fall.

“What do you think?”

“No idea.”

“You?”

“Less than no idea.”

“Write banana.”

“I already did.”

“Excellent.”

Our strategy rapidly evolved into letting Elliott answer the questions that sounded plausible while I concentrated on drinking beer, admiring the bartender, and periodically checking whether Yo had confirmed our appointment.

At one point Elliott looked over my shoulder.

“You’re really going after this?”

“I think so.”

“You ever think about…you know…not?”

I considered that.

“For about three seconds.”

He laughed.

“I thought so.”

That was one of the things I’d always appreciated about Elliott. He never judges. He asked questions. Usually he agrees with me. Other times now. Occasionally he looks at me as though I’ve completely lost my mind. But whatever I do he never tries to become my conscience. Old friendships eventually settle into that rhythm. You stop trying to improve each other and simply learn to enjoy each other’s company.

The conversation drifted from Japan to Canada, from the weather to my girlfriends, from travel plans to parents. I vented a little about my mother bitching about my writing. Elliott listened more than he spoke, occasionally nodding, occasionally smiling in that understated Canadian way that somehow communicated, I don’t entirely agree, but I understand why you’re upset.

By the time the second round ended, I’d glanced at my watch three or four times.

“You’ve got somewhere to be,” Elliott said.

“I might.”

“You definitely do.”

“Indeed I do.”

He grinned.

“Go lose your T-card.”

I laughed so hard I nearly spilled my beer.

“I’ll report back.”

“You’d better.”

We settled the bill, shook hands outside TNT, and headed in opposite directions. Elliott toward another ordinary Saturday night. Me toward Umeda, where Yo-chan was waiting.

VII: On the Way to See Yo Chan

As I entered Taisho Station the JR announcements began their familiar chant once again.

The next stop is…

Somewhere between stations my mind wandered back to negative igloos. I still have absolutely no idea what one is.

The JR announcer continued serenely informing us that the next stop was Kyobashi, or Osaka Castle Park, or somewhere that probably existed. In my head it became:

“Please enjoy negative igloos. Transfer here for the glorious nonsense line. Please exit on the right.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I muttered. “I got it.”

I did not, in fact, have it.

Somewhere between the craft beer and the heat, I’d managed to convince myself I’d fallen asleep on the train. Maybe I had. Maybe I hadn’t. Either way, I suddenly had absolutely no idea where I was.

Oh, shit.

I checked Google Maps again. Every time I opened it, it confidently gave me a different answer.

“Seventeen minutes.”

I calculated that I would get to the shop about five minutes early. This turned out to be off. The announcer cheerfully reminded us to mind the gap.

“I’m trying to mind all the gaps.”

I got off the train and looked around. Then decided getting off had been exactly the right decision. I checked the train map on the station board. I was also seventeen minutes past Umeda. Oh great. Back we go.

I thought to myself: I need cash. Then a taxi. Then a cigarette. Possibly in that order. First I had to get back to Umeda.

The train came and I rode the short distance back. The instant I stepped onto the street, I lit a cigarette and hailed a cab. I had just a fee drags when a cab pulled up and I had to toss the cig.

The taxi driver nodded when I said, “Umeda.” Progress. Seven minutes, Google claimed. For once, we agreed. As the cab rolled through the humid Osaka evening, I realized I was no longer worried about getting lost. I was worried cause I was a little late.

I’d spent the entire afternoon imagining meeting Yo chan, and now my grand entrance was shaping up to be me arriving slightly sweaty, smelling faintly of cigarettes and carrying too little cash.

Great first impression I thought.

The driver dropped me exactly where Google said he would. Google immediately betrayed me again.

Fourth floor. I found the fourth floor. Everything was locked. No people. No reception. No Yo-chan. No nothing.

Just an eerily quiet hallway that felt like the set of a film where everyone had disappeared moments before I arrived.

I called the shop.

“I’m here.”

A reply came back almost instantly.

“First floor. It’s hard to find.”

No shit.

A guy walked over and picked me up. We walked five minutes to where the shop really was, no where near where Google said it was. Typical. This guy knows nothing. Apparently.

Five minutes later I found the place.

VIII: Yo Chan

The shop staff took me up in the elevator to the 7th and opened the door to room 701. For some reason I found this number to be fitting. There was a shower but no sink. I took my own clothes and began to rinse off. Yo chan soon entered the room. She looked like her picture, but not quite. The agency website said she 24, a fact she confirmed in person. She looked about 28 to me, and I supposed her life was perhaps not the easiest.

I found her attractive, and knew I would be able to cum. She joined me in the shower, soaped up, and began to stroke my dick. In general, I prefer to handle my equipment. It is a sensitive area, and I just know it best. I turned my back to her, and then a minute later I stepped out and toweled off. She followed shortly thereafter.

As we stepped out of the shower, she assessed my naked body. She said, “You look like Boris Johnson.” I laughed away and didn’t reply. I decided then that there were some conversations not worth extending.

We climbed onto to bed. I was already erect, and she was at half mast. She unwrapped a condom and slid it on my dick. I had never sucked anyone’s dick before, and I was both exited and just a little nervous.

We began kissing. I like a bit of tongue during kissing, however, her tongue was a little aggressive. Oh well I thought, kissing, at least tonight, would not the main event. I broke the kiss, and went down on her. She was semi-erect, however I was able to fit her full penis into my mouth. The first thing I noticed was her large foreskin. The second thing was, the act was neither pleasant nor unpleasant, and she tasted neither good nor bad. I was eager to make her cum.

After a bit, she motioned for me to come back up to the head of the bed. She climbed back on top of me, and slid my dick into her ass. She had applied lube to her asshole, and hard dick slid in easily. After a short amount of time, I asked her to turn around and entered her from the rear. She began to moan and pant, and I found this very sexy. I was about to cum, and then, as I usually, do, I pulled and finished on a towel while sitting on my knees.

I then collapsed back the bed. She also sat on her knees, and came on the towel. Some of her cum landed on my leg, which I found faintly amusing. After this, I needed a cigarette. There was no smoking in the room so I asked her if I could go downstairs. She said sure, just pick me up a Pocari Sweat and call reception to get back up. I told her I would be back in five minutes, however I knew this was a lie. The fact was I would smoke three of four cigarettes and decompress for a while. This was about an hour into our date, and I had paid for ninety minutes. I did not want to re-engage in sex, so smoking and thinking quietly seemed like a good plan.

When I stepped back onto the street, the wind had gone out of my sails. Not in a bad way. Just…gone. For most of the day I’d been propelled by anticipation. Catch the train. Find Elliott. Don’t get lost. Meet Yo chan. Get the cash. Find the building. Try not to make an idiot of yourself. Then, just like that, there was nothing left to chase.

Osaka was still humming around me, but I’d become a spectator again. I checked the time on my phone. It was 12:30 AM. This immediately made me think of the Katheryn Bigalow film Zero Dark Thirty. I found myself thinking about Zero Dark Thirty. I’d never understood the criticism that it somehow endorsed torture. Showing something ugly isn’t the same as celebrating it. A film can portray violence honestly without recommending it, just as Goodfellas isn’t an argument for joining the Mafia. Sometimes a story simply trusts the audience to tell the difference.

I ducked into a nearby convenience store and bought two Pocaris, two beers, a burrito, and a pack of pack of cigarettes. I smoke another heater and drank one of the beers on the street. Then I called up to reception. There was no security, and I did not see any other customers the whole time I was there, however, at least time, I did what I was told.

Back in bed with Yo, we both undressed again and she fell asleep. I found our legs entwined. He body was very comfortable, and I can honestly say this was the sweetest part of the evening.

She woke up and pointed at the clock. It was time to go. We dressed and walked to the elevator. I leaned to give her a goodnight kiss, and she kissed me back, lightly. This was goodbye.

=====

It was after last train, so I got a taxi back my hotel near Yodoyabashi Station. The taxi rolled silently through the warm Osaka night I leaned my head against the window and watched the city slide by. Tomorrow I’d probably throw myself into another impossible plan, another train, another woman, another glorious and bizarre day. I was, by this point, quite tired.

A few hours earlier I’d been arguing with Google Maps, inventing negative igloos, convincing myself I’d missed stations that probably never existed, and experiencing a full-blown case of what I can only describe as travel boggle. Now all that urgency seemed faintly ridiculous. The date had happened. It had gone OK. I lost my T-card. I’d survived.

Travel does that. What feels catastrophic at eight o’clock becomes a mildly amusing anecdote by twelve-thirty.

But for the moment, there was nowhere I needed to be.

IX: Late Night Hotel and Bed

Back in my room I took off my shirt, washed up, and prepared for bed. For reasons I can’t entirely explain, my thoughts eventually wandered toward football. I’ve always enjoyed the sport, even if basketball remains my first love, and one of my earliest football memories comes from a Washington State game against Stanford. My mother, Claudia—CL to longtime readers—was friendly with Janet Elway, John’s mother, and at one point Janet served as something of a mentor to her. Through that connection, we ended up at the game while John Elway was still Stanford’s quarterback.

Before kickoff, Elway apparently told my mother that if he threw a touchdown, he would point toward us in the stands. Naturally, he did throw one. He was John Elway, after all. And after the score, he looked up and pointed in our direction while we yelled ourselves hoarse. I was still rooting for Washington State, which complicated the moment slightly, but even then I understood that we were watching somebody exceptional.

Elway went on to become one of the defining quarterbacks of his generation, first at Stanford and then during a long NFL career with Denver. What stays with me, though, isn’t the statistics or the championships. It’s the strange intimacy of that afternoon: my mother’s connection to his family, the promise made before the game, and the tiny gesture toward the stands after the touchdown. Sports are full of enormous public moments, but the memories that survive are often the small private ones folded inside them.

I claimed into bed, and indulged in one final reflection for the day. I thought about how funny it was that one minute you are deep in the throes of passion, moaning and panting your partner’s name, and the next you are smoking a cigarette, drinking a beer, and thinking about Zero Dark Thirty on the street. Sex, which feels so wonderful and necessary at the time, does tend to recede pretty quickly. However, the power of good sex, as Kevin Drew says in out epigraph, cannot be beat.

Dedication:

For Yo chan. Thank you for taking my T card baby. Godspeed. You rule.

Posted on by Matt Thomas

The Adventures of the Thin Man and Andrea II: The Thin Man’s Son. CHAPTER 1: The Thin Man in Tokyo

TOKYO — 1:13 PM, late January

He wakes up without remembering the descent. Not the drinking. Not the last message. Not the shape of the night leaving his body. Just the slow return of weight.

The house is rented, not lived in. A clean, architectural expanse in western Tokyo—glass, pale wood, too much air between objects. The kind of space that does not ask questions because it assumes nothing will answer.

He sits up once, then stops. 1:13 PM. The afternoon has already begun without him. He lies back for a moment and listens to the silence of money maintaining itself. There is a bottle on the floor beside the bed. Half-finished. Warm now. He doesn’t look at it again.

He stands, showers without thinking, dresses in the order that muscle memory dictates: black shirt, trousers, jacket. No tie. Never a tie unless someone insists.

His phone is already lit when he returns. Two messages. One from Tomoyo.

“Weekend still okay?”

One from Mina.

“Bar As One. Late.”

He reads them without responding yet. Then another notification appears. A different rhythm. Alejandro.

No name attached. Just the letter cluster, like something filed incorrectly in a system that never bothered to correct itself.

“Need you in Akasaka. KBS situation. Quiet, but messy.”

He stares at it longer than he should. Then:

“Corporate accounting discrepancy. Possibly internal extraction.”

That word—extraction—is always a translation problem. It never means only one thing. He exhales, once.

And for the first time that day, he is fully awake.

KYOTO — That Same Day

I am in my classroom when I see the notification. I’m not during anything important. Just one of those pauses between things where students are pretending to work and I am pretending not to notice they aren’t.

The phone is face down. I flip it. It’s Signal. I don’t even check the sender first anymore; I know it’s from the Thin Man.

“Akasaka. KBS. Quiet job.”

That’s it. No greeting. No explanation. No punctuation beyond necessity.

I look up at the room. The students are writing essays on narrative voice, ironically enough. I tell them to keep going and step into the hallway.

Outside, the corridor smells like floor wax and winter coats that never fully dry. I write back:

“You’re back?”

A pause.

Then:

“Always.”

I sit down on the stairs and realize I’ve been waiting for this message more than I admitted to myself. Not because I want the job. Because when he appears, the world becomes legible again.

Even if it shouldn’t.

TOKYO — 5:57 PM That Same Day

Akasaka in daylight is almost offensive in its normality. Glass buildings pretending they are neutral. People moving like they have somewhere else to be even when they don’t. He enters KBS through a side entrance.

Not invited. Not uninvited. Just expected. The problem is explained in fragments.

A mid-level finance manager has flagged irregular payments in a production budget. Someone else has flagged the flag. A third layer has erased the second.

Now everyone is quietly pretending nothing happened while insisting something must be done. He listens. He does not take notes. He asks three questions.

The answers contradict each other in useful ways.

By 4:02 PM, he knows what happened. By 4:07 PM, he knows who benefited. By 5:12 PM, he knows why no one will say it out loud.

He leaves without announcing that anything is resolved. This is the job. 

On the street outside, he finally replies to Tomoyo who he has beeb seeing for about two moths now:

“Saturday still okay.”

Then Mina:

“Later.”

Then Alejandro:

“Done.”

No embellishment. No summary. Just closure.

KYOTO — 10:02 PM That Same Day 

I am in a shisha place near Sanjo when he updates me. Not the kind of shisha place you imagine. Cleaner. Quieter. Students pretending to be older than they are. A place where time slows down but doesn’t stop.

I have a draft open on my laptop. A text arrives. It is about him. It is always about him these days.

“KBS resolved.”

That’s all. No story. No detail.

I type:

“What was it?”

Three dots appear. Disappear. Return.

“Accounting.”

That word again. He uses it the way other people use weather reports. I lean back.

Outside, Kyoto is doing its careful thing—bicycles, soft neon, the sense that nothing ever fully arrives here.

I realize I’ve stopped writing fiction and started writing evidence. 

TOKYO — 11:35 PM That Same Night

Bar As One is half-lit, as always. Mina is behind the counter like she has been there longer than the building. She does not ask what happened in Akasaka. She never asks anything that can be answered incorrectly.

He sits and orders a whisky ginger. They talk about nothing that matters. Tomoyo arrives later. She wears corporate black like it is a second job. She kisses him once, briefly, like a scheduled interruption. He notices everything about her that is real and nothing about her that is performance. That is what he likes about her.

At some point, his phone vibrates again. A new Signal message. It’s from Matt.

KYOTO — 11:26 PM. That Same Night.

I’m still at Shisha, still thinking about the Thin Man, I shouldn’t be doing this in public. But I am.

Me:

“I think I understand what you do in Tokyo.”

A reply comes faster than expected.

“You don’t.”

I almost smile. Then I don’t. I type:

“I’m going to Costa Rica.”

This time there is a long pause.  Then:

“Why.”

I look at the ceiling of the shisha place. Smoke moves like it has intention.

“Luciana.”

The name sits there on my screen like it has weight. I don’t know if he will respond. 

But I know I’ve crossed a line.

TOKYO — 12:14 AM The Next Morning

He reads the name once. Then again. Luciana.

Not spoken in years. Not held in any current system. Not part of any job file. He steps outside for a smoke. 

Akasaka is quieter at night, but not safer. Just less honest about itself. He does not ask Matt not to go. That would be meaningless.

Instead he writes:

“Don’t dig wrong.”

Then, after a pause:

“If you’re going, be precise.”

He puts the phone away. Tomoyo is still inside, laughing at something someone said that is not funny. Mina is polishing glasses that are already clean.

He thinks, briefly, of leaving Tokyo again. Not because something is wrong. Because something has started.

And that is usually enough.

KYOTO — 12:44 AM The Next Morning

I read his message twice.

Be precise.

As if precision is the problem. As if I have ever been anything else. 

I close my laptop. Outside, Kyoto continues as if nothing has happened. But I know it has.

I have a name now. And names are how you begin to lose your distance from things.

Posted on by Matt Thomas

On the Film “My Dinner with Andre” Part I: Wally in New York

Note: Opening a multi-part early series from my first blog Classical Sympathies back in 2009, this piece takes up the beginning of Wallace Shawn’s walk through New York en route to his meeting with André Gregory in My Dinner with Andre, using Wally’s voice-over as a lens on artistic precarity, everyday survival, and the comic disproportion between existential weight and mundane errands. The note situates the film’s opening movement as both narrative setup and philosophical framing: a winter city of post offices, xerox shops, and unanswered calls becomes the psychological prelude to a conversation that will later expand into memory, performance, and self-mythology. This installment follows Wally up to his arrival at the restaurant for the pre-dinner drink, where the film’s central encounter is still suspended in anticipation, and meaning is generated less by action than by the act of getting there.

My Dinner with Andre is the famous, or infamous, 1981 film of a dinner conversation between Wallace Shawn, the actor and playwright, and Andre Gregory, the theater director. If I were to make a twofold claim for the film: i) that it is one of the most action packed films ever made, and ii) that it effectively encapsulates the thematics of the entire 20th century, I do not think this would be overstatement. My intent here, however, is not to establish either of these postulates, but rather to simply “blog” the script in the hopes that what needs to be said works its way to the surface. Fair warning: the undertaking will require several posts.

Money crops up on two of the first three pages of the script, and because money, and the lack of it, is a theme that runs beneath the entire script: Andre has money, has the freedom to travel and to spend several years trying to “find himself”; Wally does not. Still, “having money” is, as ever, a relative concept. At the opening of the film, Wally is seen walking through the streets of New York, heading for the restaurant where he is to meet Andre. It appears to be winter, maybe February. In the opening voice-over, Wally ruminates on the life of the artist: The life of a playwright is tough. It’s not easy, as some people seem to think. You work hard writing plays, and nobody puts them on. You take up other lines of work to try to make a living–acting, in my case–and people don’t hire you. So you spend your days crossing the city back and forth doing the errands of your trade. Today wasn’t any easier than any other day. I’d had to be up by ten to make some important phone calls, then I’d gone to the stationary store to buy envelopes, and then to the xerox shop. There were dozens of things to do. By five o’clock I’d finally made it to the post office and mailed off several copies of my plays, meanwhile checking constantly with my answering service to see if my agent had called with any acting work. In the morning, the mailbox had been stuffed with bills. What was I supposed to do? How was I supposed to pay them? After all, I was doing my best (17).

One of the marvelous things about the film is the tongue-in-cheek humor that is rarely, if ever, directly alluded to. A deeply serious film, Andre is also a comedy, a fact which we can recognize because we see that the writers are having fun with the characters who are in turn themselves. That is, Wally and Andre are playing versions of themselves–we assume that most of the experiences that Andre recounts in the film are based on real experiences, and that Wally’s account of his home life is more or less true to life–but exaggerated versions. As Shawn says in the preface to the script, “I knew immediately that {…} I’d have to distort us both slightly–our conflicts would have to become sharpened–we’d have to become–well–characters {…} It would be an enormously elaborate piece of construction” (14). In this initial passage, the humor lies in Wally’s conception of a difficult life: “I’d had to be up by ten to make some important phone calls.”

Wally’s sense of pressure is, from the outset, deliberately out of proportion to the scale of his circumstances. The tone is one of genuine complaint, but the complaint itself is almost comically domestic: the architecture of a “hard day” is built out of errands, envelopes, xerox shops, and an answering service that may or may not contain salvation in the form of an acting job. What Shawn achieves here, and what the film quietly sustains, is a recalibration of seriousness—where existential weight is not attached to grand events but to the texture of administrative survival. Wally’s New York is not a place of romance or revelation, but of circulation: between post office, mailbox, and telephone, as though modern artistic life has been reduced to a loop of deferred contact with recognition.

At the same time, the humor is never fully separable from sincerity. Wally is not merely being mocked; he is also articulating a recognisable condition of artistic precarity, one that the film refuses to glamorize. The genius of the opening monologue lies in this double register: we are invited to laugh at the disproportion between emotional tone and material fact, but we are also made to recognise how easily that disproportion becomes a lived reality. The “dozens of things to do” are not nothing; they are just insufficiently legible as crisis, which is precisely what makes them feel like crisis.

By the time Wally finally moves through the city toward the restaurant, the structure of the film has already been quietly established: this is a world in which meaning is not delivered through events but through the way events are narrated to oneself while walking between obligations. New York, in this sense, is not a backdrop but a medium of self-composition—an environment in which thought is constantly being assembled under mild pressure, as though consciousness itself were an errand.

He checks the time again, as he has been doing throughout the afternoon, and adjusts his route slightly, not out of urgency so much as orientation. The meeting with André already exists in his mind as something slightly unreal, a fixed appointment that has not yet been granted substance by arrival. He crosses another block, passes into the thinning evening light, and begins to approach the restaurant where, for the first time that day, the structure of waiting will shift from solitary to shared.

to be continued…

Posted on by Matt Thomas

My Time in Kumamoto Japan I: NOVA and Meeting Sachie

Note: This is the first entry in a new series about my time in Kumamoto, Japan between April of 1997 and December of 1998. What began as a recollection of a short, chaotic teaching stint but became an excavation of place, power, and early adult identity under surveillance. Set against the compressed social ecosystem of a small Japanese city in the late 1990s, the piece moves through NOVA’s glass-room culture, its porous rules, and the peculiar cast of lifers, bosses, and drifters who inhabited it. What emerges is not a complaint but a tonal study: of being watched, of improvising freedom within constraint, and of the quiet luck of finding something real—Sachie—amid a system that often felt artificial.

Epigraph:

Kim You Bore Me to Death

—Grandaddy

I arrived in Kumamoto in April of 1997 to teach English at NOVA, which at the time felt like a pretty wild thing to be doing. Kumamoto is not Tokyo. It’s a smaller city, slower, and NOVA was right at the north end of the Shotengai, basically downtown. Everyone knew everyone, or at least knew of them, which I didn’t fully understand yet.

What I also didn’t fully understand was that I would be living with one of my bosses.

Her name was Sam. She was about 35, from Wales, and she had this story she loved to tell—more like boast—that Donovan had written a song for her mother. I never quite figured out which one. She was in the apartment with me and another teacher, Heather, and she was there all the time. Not just physically there, but present. Observing. Asking. Not in a relaxed roommate way, but in a way that felt like she was always slightly checking something.

NOVA had a loose rule about no fraternization between students and teachers. Loose being the key word. It happened all the time. Another teacher, Cameron, told me a lot of the young women came to find a boyfriend. Whether that was true or not, relationships were constant. There was this big izakaya on the Shotengai where everyone went, and it was basically understood that whatever the rule was, it wasn’t really enforced.

By early June I was seeing Sachie, who had been my student. She was my girlfriend then and is my wife now. I went to her house pretty early on. Her father, Tetsuyo, a gruff, older, very conservative Japanese dad, said he would meet me, but then he went to take a “bath” and didn’t. So I didn’t meet him for months. Her mother, Kazuko, was lovely then and is lovely now.

We couldn’t really spend time together at my place, obviously, so we’d drive around in her car. That was our space. We’d park wherever passed for lovers’ lane in Kumamoto, which, thankfully, was not the Zodiac. No Zodiac in Kyushu, thankfully. We’d sit there, windows cracked, the car quiet, the whole thing feeling both secret and completely ordinary at the same time. That was just how it worked.

At some point I told Joy, another teacher, that I was seeing Sachie, and I told her not to say anything because it was technically against the rules. She said of course. And then, of course, she immediately went and told John G., and from there it got around.

By that point it didn’t really matter. I had to leave, but I also wanted to leave. NOVA felt like a factory. The hours, the structure, the constant low-level supervision—it wasn’t for me. I gave my one month’s notice and in July of 1997 I moved to Washington. Better hours, easier gig, and a lot more freedom.

There were a couple of long-term guys at NOVA, both Brits, both lifers in a way I couldn’t really imagine.

Cameron was the more interesting of the two. We’d go to the big izakaya on the Shotengai—yakitori, big beers in frosty mugs, the usual—but his real place was Madam’s Bar, also on the Shotengai. Madam was the owner, a transvestite, and Cameron loved her. Absolutely loved her. He went there every night.

He took me a few times. It was small and dark, always smoky, with Queen playing on a loop. I drank White Russians and, for reasons that made sense at the time, felt like a bit of a stud. It had its own rules, though. You could feel that pretty quickly.

By Halloween of 1997 I was already at Washington, but I was still around Kumamoto a fair bit, still seeing people. The week before Halloween I went back to Madam’s with Cameron.

“Matty baby, T-shirt time,” Madam said. “You will buy the bar T-shirt. Halloween theme. ¥4000.”

¥4000 was a lot for me then.

“Madam baby, that’s a bit steep,” I said. “I’ve already got plenty of T-shirts. Maybe next year.”

She and Cameron had a quick whispered conversation off to the side. We finished our drinks and left. Outside, Cameron turned to me.

“Matty baby, there’s not going to be a next year. You’re banned. 86’d. Hit the bricks, pal. You’re out.”

“For not buying a T-shirt?”

“Oh yeah,” he said. “T-shirts are serious business.”

And that was it. Never went back.

Mark was the other lifer. Late thirties, married, one daughter. Solid guy. He loved his wife in a way that was both sincere and slightly odd in its phrasing.

“I can hack this job,” he’d say, “as long as I can go home each night to my little mouse’s ear.”

I never heard that expression before or since.

John E. was our boss, technically over Sam. He was always in and out—Osaka, Fukuoka, training sessions, that kind of thing. When he was around, though, he had a habit.

When we drank, he would smack Mark on the butt. All the time. Didn’t ask. Just did it. Mark would try to laugh it off.

“John E. baby, maybe not tonight,” he’d say.

Didn’t matter. It kept happening.

One night John E. turned to me. “Matty baby, can I smack your ass?”

“John E. baby, no way,” I said. “Thanks, but no thanks.”

At least he asked.

John G. was an anomaly. Everyone else was in their twenties or thirties; he was in his sixties. He said—said, mind you—that he had made and lost six fortunes, mostly in gold in South Africa. Maybe. By the time I met him he was broke as fuck.

He would fall asleep in class. Not subtly either. Full-on snoring, loud enough that you could hear it through the glass walls. And these were small classes, three or four students at most, everyone sitting there while he just drifted off. You could see it happen in real time.

John E. had a number of supervisory conversations with him. Nothing changed.

Then there was Paul, who wasn’t even at Kumamoto—he worked out of Osaka. I met him during training in late April of ’97, and he was a strange guy from the jump.

He told this whole story about growing up in Arkansas, parents who were abusive, into drugs, no money. Said he ran away at sixteen and found God on the road shortly after. Compared himself—without irony—to St. Paul on the road to Damascus. Claimed he made a living hustling poker, which might have been true, but there was something else in there too. Not exactly dishonest, but… flexible.

He wanted to convert me. That was clear immediately.

We walked all night. Ten hours, maybe more, all over Osaka. Through neighborhoods, through stations, at one point through a huge homeless encampment—post-bubble Japan, a lot of salarymen who had fallen hard. It stuck with me. Paul talked and listened in equal measure, which is its own kind of technique, but there was always one direction to it.

The goal was simple: Matty finds Jesus tonight, come hell or high water.

I didn’t.

A couple of months later he came down to visit Kumamoto. We went to the izakaya on the Shotengai, then another bar—not Madam’s. Different energy.

There was a girl there, Yoko, and she was very clearly interested in me. So she’s all over me and Young Mr. Johnson is getting, uh, perky. I’m kind of nuzzling her neck and all, and Sachie and I are barely dating, not exclusive yet. Cameron leans over.

“Uh, Matty baby, YMJ is looking a little perky there.”

“Ruh roh,” I said. “Gotta go.”

There were a few good reasons for that.

One, I wanted to date Sachie only. I wanted to be exclusive. I told her the next day what had happened and she was like, “Good. Let’s go exclusive then.” So that was that.

Two, Yoko was like nineteen and I was twenty-three, and she had tons and tons of pancake makeup, which just wasn’t my thing.

So I jetted. Walked fifteen minutes home.

On the way I passed Fumachi. Of course, “machi” means street in Japanese, so to me it read FU-machi, which I found hilarious. I tried to explain this to Sachie once and she was like, “Yeah, machi just means street.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “That’s why it’s funny.”

Didn’t really translate.

By the river, as always, hammered dudes were out there pissing into the water. Just part of the scenery.

I get home, it’s around eleven, I’m getting ready for bed, and a taxi pulls up.

Out step Paul and Yoko.

Ruh roh.

Paul’s staying over, sleeping on a futon in the living room, and I’m thinking, what’s the plan here—hook up with Yoko right there while me, Heather, and Sam are all in the apartment? Outta control. Maybe that’s just how he rolled.

Anyway, Yoko took one look at me and jets. She’s gone.

Paul shrugged it off.

“Easy come, easy go.”

We end up playing poker instead. For a little money. I’d played all through childhood, in college, figured I was about a B+.

He wiped the floor with me. Took all my lunch money and didn’t lose a hand.

That’s when I started to believe him.

Looking back, those first two months in Kumamoto feel both chaotic and oddly contained, like everything was happening all at once but also exactly as it was supposed to. NOVA was a factory, no doubt—bad bosses, strange rules, glass rooms, and the occasional existential crisis over whether a black turtleneck and a white short-sleeved shirt constituted a violation of “regs.” I smoked Mild Sevens like it was part of the job description, drifted between pool halls and izakayas, and tried to make sense of a place where everyone seemed to know more about what I was doing than I did. And in the middle of all that, somehow, I met Sachie. That part feels less like chance the older I get, more like the one thing that cut cleanly through all the noise.

It didn’t last long—April to July, just a couple of months—but it stuck. The people, the rhythms, the small absurdities, the feeling of being watched and not quite fitting and also not really caring. I left because I had to, and because I wanted to, and both things were true at the same time. Better hours, easier life, more freedom. But Kumamoto was the start of something, even if I didn’t know what at the time. I never did get that T-shirt.

Dedication:

For my wife Sachie. Glad I met ya baby.

Note: If you like this piece, you may like the pieces below, which take up my time just before moving from the US to Japan.

My Time at Northern Arizona University Part I: Decision and Arrival
On My Interlude Between Hamilton College and Japan, 1996 and early 1997.

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Scenes from Hamilton College VI: Junior Year in New Zealand

Note: This is Part VI of the Hamilton series. Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV and Part V are available.

Epigraph:

They all come and peep through a hole in the wall
Keep the bastards guessing
He likes to take the long way home,
It’s another fine decision

Peter Jefferies

I spent a full academic year, the second semester of my junior year and the first of my senior year, at The University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand. Otago is a pretty good university, but Dunedin is pretty small and kind of country. Overall, it was a good experience, but I was flat broke and not on a meal plan due to an oversight by I guess myself and my parents. More on that later.

After I landed, I spent one night at a hotel and bought a bottle of wine, for the first time in my life. I was of legal drinking age in New Zealand. I drank about three-quarters of it and was a little hungover the next day. At Hamilton people did not drink wine.

The first few days I was on a homestay in the country with a sheep farming family. The father spent the day watching cricket, and then would rouse and take the sheep out and move them around, with sheepdogs and all. I remember going to a local pub with two of his sons and their friends and we had five or six beers and they drove home. On the drive home they tried to run over rabbits on the road, and roared with delight when they got close. That was a scene.

Then, I went back to Dunedin, and met my roommates who were all in graduate school studying to be teachers. These were Tim, Ho (who was of Maori descent), Sharlene, and Donna. Tim was a musician and there was a large piano in his room. The roommates were good folks, however I think I disappointed them a little because they asked for an American roommate and were apparently expecting someone really flamboyant and loud. I was not that, and kept to myself much of the year. One time though that I lived up to their expectations was when Tim once again said “you’re from Washington D.C.” and I said “I’m not from fucking Washington D.C., I told you before I’m from Washington State!” Tim said to the roommates, “I told you rooming with an American would be fun.”

There were a number of other exchange students from the U.S. there and I got to know some of them a bit at first, but for some reason I was a little standoffish, and we didn’t hang out much after the first week or so. I was back into running, not smoking and barely drinking, although I did go out once with Ho and his Maori friends and got blasted. I would run 8-10 miles a day, sometimes more, and was in training for a marathon.

As I mentioned, my food situation was bad. We had neglected to put me on a meal plan, and I think my parents didn’t even know this, and at first I chipped in what I could to the communal roommate shopping. However, they ate very poor quality mutton all the time and I just couldn’t hack it. Mutton is pretty bad at the best of times, and cheap mutton is awful. So I went off the roommate plan and ate mostly trail mix for dinner. Trail mix, it turns out, is among the best value for money food around. I would buy raisins, peanuts, and carob chips and that’s what I ate at the flat. For lunch I would eat one apricot yoghurt bar and a cup of coffee, costing around $3.50 NZD. I would eat super slowly, taking about 45 minutes to finish the apricot bar and somehow this made me feel like I’d had a meal. I was living on about $7 NZD a day and was hungry all the time. With this and the running, I was also super thin.

At Otago I studied some more literature, and also a lot of Indian History, with a focus on Ghandi. I learned a great deal about Gandhi this year, and found him interesting. One incident I recall was in one class on Buddhism the professor assigned a paper on Zen. I had the bright idea to turn in an empty paper, which I thought would be symbolic, but the professor was a step ahead of me. “Don’t try and turn in an empty paper for this,” he said, “I’ve seen that move before.”

One more interesting thing that happened was when I was invited to the faculty club for drinks by my Australian literature professor. He was in his 60’s and was an Otago lifer. At first I was kind of flattered to be invited, however on arrival it was clear he had other motives. He started hitting on me in a most egregious manner, and it was obvious he had done this many, many times. I had two drinks and politely removed myself. To his credit this had no impact on how he treated me in class, and things went on as normal. I guess it was all par for the course.

The Otago campus was on the north side of town, and the south side was said to be pretty rough. “Don’t go down there,” I was told more than once, “it’s dangerous.” But I thought it couldn’t be that dangerous, so one day I walked down there by myself to check it out. There were a lot of industrial areas and such, and it was a little run-down, but I got home safe just fine. I suspected that “dangerous” in a New Zealand context might mean something a little different than in a U.S. context.

My roommate Sharlene had a friend who just had a breakup and Sharlene wanted us to get together. She invited us both to a party, and sure enough we started making out, under a table as I recall. It just lasted that one night, but Sharlene thought it was hilarious. “They were pashing,” she cried, “pashing away.” Pashing is apparently Kiwi slang for kissing, or maybe it was a Sharlene original.

Sharlene had a stepfather and I visited his house once. He had a nice car and complained on and on about how many tickets he would get from traffic cameras. Traffic cameras were on the scene in 1995. This appeared to be his only topic. He should have driven more carefully.

After the pashing incident, there was another girl who was interested in me. I forget her name, but it started with an M. M. was really into me, maybe because I read a lot and so did she. There was a kind of club place for students with TVs (I remember watching the O.J. Simpson car chase there), and I would hang out there. M. would come in and lob a snickers bar from over my shoulder for me and buy me a coke. This was really nice and super helpful because I needed all the calories I could get. M. wanted to get together, but I wasn’t into it. We did spend a fair amount of time together, at the club and going to the bookstore with another friend of hers.

As I mentioned, I was in good running shape this year and actually went out for a marathon. I was doing great through the first half, but started to fade really bad around the 20 mile mark. I had terrible blisters and pulled my groin and couldn’t imagine doing another 6 miles, so I pulled up. I asked a couple with a car for a ride to the finish line where there were buses, and they gave it to me but made it clear they were not impressed with me packing it in. I wasn’t impressed with myself either, but marathons hurt like hell.

In addition to running, and starving, I also went out for Aikido. Aikido is a Japanese martial art, and I was already well on my way to my Asian Studies minor and was getting into all things Asian. Aikido was taught by a white couple, and this was their life. They were ok teachers, but the atmosphere was just a little culty. Despite my father’s fears, I have never been amenable to cults-like scenes. I stuck with it for a number of months however, and managed to get my first belt.

I don’t remember listening to a lot of music that year because I don’t think I had a stereo in my room, however, one day on the radio I did hear a song I immediately fell in love with. This was “The Fate of the Human Carbine,” by a Dunedin artist called Peter Jefferies. It was spooky and weird and totally captivating. Cat Power would later cover it, and lines from this song serve as the epigraph for this piece.

One more thing that happened this year was that Jenny from Hamilton visited. I don’t think she came specifically to see me, but I’m not sure. I was traveling, with god knows what money, in the New Zealand Alps which are on the South Island there and are really lovely. Jenny and I stayed at a hostel, and hung out which was really cool. That’s the same trip when I went for a walk in deep snow and almost died when the snow suddenly came up to my neck. Deep snow is almost as dangerous as the ocean, it turns out.

Those are my memories of New Zealand. Despite being so broke I had to eat a 45 minute apricot bar, it was a good year and I got really good grades. My academic focus would fall off, however, when I got back to Hamilton, but that’s a story for the next post.

Dedication:

For apricot bars and trail mix. You literally saved my life.

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Scenes from Hamilton College II: Freshman Year Continued (with cameos from Honey, the Print Shop, and Billy Bragg)

Note: In Part I of this series I wrote about my freshman year at Hamilton, focusing on two friends, Ian and Jake. Part II will branch out and cover a fairly wide, and somewhat random, set of memories.

Epigraph:

I had an uncle who once played for Red Star Belgrade
He said some things are really best left unspoken
But I prefer it all to be out in the open

Billy Bragg

I have already written quite a bit about the characters who lived in the North Dorm freshman year at Hamilton, however there are a few more to cover. First were the first floor stoners. Basmo was a stoner, and he lived on my side of the dorm, but on the other side of the first floor lived the hardcore stoners. This consisted of a quad of guys whose names I don’t totally recall, but one was Peter Kimber, and who got baked at all waking hours and played Roger Waters’ Amused to Death solo on repeat. Next to them, in a double I believe, lived Keys. Keys’ actual name was Caleb, but everyone called him Keys because of the six to eight keys he had dangling from around his neck at all times. What on earth did he need all those keys for? One for the dorm, maybe one for a car (although he should not have been driving at all because he was the single biggest stoner in the dorm and perhaps on campus), what else? I can’t imagine.

Keys and I were not that close, but I did see a lot of him because we had the same job, which was in the school print shop. I don’t know if print shops still exist in the same form in this digital age, but back then the print shop was busy as. We held the campus down. There were two slightly older women who worked at the print shop full-time and three of us students helping out. The full-timers were Sally and Deb. Deb was the boss, and she was kind of motherly and kind to the students. Sally was nice too, but she could be tough. She would bark at us when we made mistakes, which was often because we were running large machines that would glitch pretty frequently. Sally was both the little sister to Deb and also the enforcer. I liked them both, even though Deb ended up firing me, which I’ll get to later.

So Keys would come in lit every day and sort of fumble through his work, which consisted mostly of stapling and collating. I was trusted more than Keys, with good reason, so I ran the machines, but I also did stapling and collating. We printed things for professors, menus for the dining halls, the school newsletter, and a bunch of other stuff. The third student was a girl whose name I don’t recall, and she was a super-hardcore feminist. Everything in the world that was wrong was men’s fault, and it was her only topic. She didn’t seem to dislike me so much as just want to lecture Keys and I all through work, which usually lasted two to three hours in the afternoon, about the ills of men. I was, and am, up for a little feminist theory but Keys was no help and I don’t even think he noticed her, so it was kind of just me and her. Serious feminism and collating are, perhaps, not best paired.

I didn’t originally want the print shop job. I needed work, and there was kind of an intake for all working students where you put your first choice. I put library, but didn’t get the gig. John Innes put audio/video and he got it, which meant he often had to get up early to set up videos for professor’s classes. I would not have been good at that. The print shop was more my speed, but eventually it got really repetitive and I started skipping work more and more. I would go walk in the woods behind campus, or just drink coffee with about a half cup of honey and hang around after class. I also improved as a student through the year, and took my English classes pretty seriously so I was spending more time in the library, although still not sleeping much.

My money situation was tight, although not as bad as it would later be during my junior year abroad in New Zealand where it was super tight. I had a little income from the print shop and my parents sent a small allowance once in a while, but I usually didn’t have more than about 15 bucks in my pocket at any one time. What money I did have went mostly to CDs, as many as I could afford. I had a dining hall pass, but the dining hall food was not really my style so I mostly lived on toast and coffee with honey. Then at night people would order pizza from a local shop, but that was too expensive for me so I would get “friend dough.” Fried dough is just what it sounds like–deep friend pizza dough with powdered sugar, and it cost about $1.50 for a big box. Not the best diet, but it was what I could afford.

One time the father of one of my classmates from high school visited for some reason; he must have been in the area. We met for lunch, and when he left he handed me $100 bucks. This was a serious windfall, and I immediately blew it on CDs, perhaps Neil Young’s Harvest Moon and others. My CD collection, although no rival to Ian’s was slowly increasing and I liked it.

Back in the dorm, in addition to the guys I have discussed, there were also girls, who lived on the second and fourth floor. I got to know the girls directly above us on the second floor pretty well, although not many of the others in the dorm. Among these was Rochelle, who was the girl I was closest to. Rochelle was, I think, from New York, and when she arrived on campus she made a big deal about having a boyfriend. This didn’t last long however, and although I didn’t want her to be my girlfriend I did like hanging out with her. She kind of mothered me a bit though, which I wasn’t so into, because I was going to do what I was going to do. I still have her contact, and I believe she might even read this piece! I think I also met Marie Bishko freshman year, and Marie is someone I thought was really cool.

I don’t really remember any us North guys hooking up with the second floor girls, but it must of happened. Another incident which occurred around this time had to do with my roommate B. and his girlfriend from high school. Like Rochelle, and even more so, he made a big deal of his girlfriend and told us all kind of semi-salacious details. Then one day he told us she was coming to visit and he wanted the three of us in the quad to go to a hotel for a night. I told him sure, if you pay, but he said no. He was dead serious but we told him to forget it, so sure enough she arrived and they hooked up while we all pretended to sleep. That only happened once, thankfully, and it still strikes me as pretty odd. He later broke up with her and fell in love with a Jewish girl, but that didn’t last either because he wasn’t Jewish.

I mentioned in Part I that Jake pledged the fraternity Sig. Ian and John Slack also pledged, Chi Psi (I had to Google the spelling). I spent some time at Chi Psi as well as, where I was alleged to sit on the steps in my trench coat, but I preferred Sig. There was another frat called Deke, and that was where the wildest, and the worst parties were. At Deke there was copious amounts of Milwaukee’s Best (the fabled Beast) and jungle juice. The parties were terrible, but there was a pool table which was a bonus. I didn’t drink much at college, mostly because I had no money, but I did drink some at Deke, with exactly the results you would imagine. I believe it was at Deke where Marc Campbell pulled off his famous pacification move. I didn’t pledge a frat, and I was and remain glad I didn’t. Greek life wasn’t for me.

One guy who I believe lived in North was called Gabe. Gabe was super popular at first in freshman year, and he played guitar on the grass outside the dorm. He was pretty good and he would play “Sexuality” by Billy Bragg which was surprisingly popular in 1992. People, including girls, would flock around him, but over time something seemed to happen to Gabe. He ran for class president and lost to a guy called Kerry who was African American. Kerry lived down the hill in a different part of campus, and he ran really hard for the job. I think Gabe’s ran mostly on a music ticket, and although he got a lot of votes I think he came in second. He may have taken this hard, because he kind of faded into the background, or maybe he just changed up his action. I think I voted, but may have voted for Kerry.

As I mentioned, Jake and I saw less of one another once he started pledging, however we still saw each other in English class and in the English building. We overlapped professors, although he knew some I did not. The two best professors in the English department were George Balkhe and Fred Wagner. Balkhe was still in his prime, maybe late 50’s, whereas Wagner was older and I believe in a semi-emeritus role. I wasn’t even sure I ever took a class from Wagner, but it’s been confirmed that I did, Modern British and American Drama, which makes sense. I didn’t much like 20th century American plays, as plays are mostly blueprints anyway. In any case, Mr. Wagner knew me early in the year because Balkhe praised my reading knowledge to him. Jake and I would go to Wagner’s house, also down the hill toward the town of Clinton (the closest town to Hamilton, about a 15 minute walk), and I recall once we played him the song “Marlene Dietrich’s Favorite Poem” by Peter Murphy, formerly of Bauhaus, with Peter Murphy murmuring “sad-eyed pearl and drop lips…”

Peter Murphy is super underrated by the way, and Wagner liked the song, which just showed how cool he was.

I took a few classes with Balkhe, and we studied poems, and novels–typical choices mostly. I enjoyed these and read most of them, even Faulkner who is really dense. For the ones I didn’t I just faked it. Like I said, Balkhe thought I was amazing because on the first day of class he asked for a list of books we had read and I listed like 200. These were mostly Agatha Christie and John LeCarre and such, but I guess it was good enough. Balhke liked the singer Donovan and the song “Mellow Yellow.”

Electrical banana
Is gonna be a sudden craze

(I later saw Donovan at a new age convention in Boston when I was visiting Ian after college, which I will recount later).

Wagner and Balkhe are both passed away now, so rest in peace to two great English teachers and mentors.

That’s about all I have on freshman year. The last thing is about the featured image for this post, which is the album cover for Bob Dylan’s Oh Mercy. I have written about The Pogues quite a bit, but the album I listened to most freshman year was Oh Mercy. After geology class had a break before lunch and would go back and semi-sleep to Oh Mercy. The quad was always empty at that time of day, and this was the best rest I would get. The album still makes me sleepy to this day, and features excellent production from the famed producer Daniel Lanois. So thank you Bob and Daniel.

Dedication: For Fred. And for George–I hope you are enjoying a little electrical banana up there in heaven.

to be continued…

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On The Dubious Anna Delvey

Note: This essay reflects on the curious cultural figure of Anna Delvey, whose rise and fall in the New York art and social scene became one of the stranger morality plays of the late 2010s. Delvey—born Anna Sorokin in Russia—gained notoriety for presenting herself as a wealthy European heiress while attempting to secure loans and social capital for an ambitious but largely imaginary cultural venture known as the Anna Delvey Foundation.

The events described here draw on widely reported elements of the case: Delvey’s years moving through luxury hotels in Manhattan, her efforts to obtain financing for a private art and social club, the unraveling of her financial claims, and the now-famous trip to Dubai in which a friend—later a magazine writer documenting the experience—was left responsible for an enormous hotel bill after promised funds failed to appear.

The piece does not attempt investigative reporting. Instead, it approaches the story in a spirit of cultural anthropology. Cities like New York have always attracted individuals engaged in various forms of self-invention. The line between ambition, performance, exaggeration, and outright fraud can sometimes appear only after events have run their course. Delvey’s story is compelling partly because it dramatizes this thin boundary in unusually vivid form.

If the tone here sometimes drifts toward sympathy rather than condemnation, that is intentional. Many urban cultural scenes—especially art worlds—operate on the energy of strivers who are, in one way or another, attempting to become something slightly larger than their present circumstances allow. Most of them eventually succeed or quietly disappear. A very small number, like Delvey, collapse in public.

Their stories reveal something not only about themselves, but about the environments that briefly believed in them.

Epigraph

“For all the crazy people who can never get it right.”
— Drugstore

I. The Entrance

There is a certain kind of person who arrives in a city not merely to live there but to declare themselves into existence. Cities like New York attract them the way bright lights attract moths. They arrive with luggage, ideas, clothes that signal belonging, and an almost reckless confidence that the future will eventually arrange itself around their intentions.

Anna Delvey was one of these people.

When she appeared in the New York art scene, she seemed to possess the basic ingredients required for entry into that peculiar ecosystem: style, confidence, and an air of European mystery. She wore expensive-looking dresses and shoes. She wore aa lot of make up and had her hair done at expensive salons. She seemed for a while to ooze money. She spoke casually about ambitious cultural projects. She moved through hotels and restaurants as if she had always belonged to that world. In New York, that is often enough.

The city runs on confidence performances. Every ambitious young person who arrives there is, in some sense, performing the life they intend to have. The art world especially is full of people who are not yet what they claim to be but are working very hard to become it.

Delvey fit into that theater perfectly.

II. The Vision

The striking thing about Delvey was that she didn’t simply want to attend the art scene. She wanted to build something inside it. Her idea was the Anna Delvey Foundation: a kind of private cultural club and exhibition space in downtown Manhattan. It would combine gallery spaces, social rooms, events, artists, patrons, and the atmosphere of a private cultural salon. A place where the city’s creative and wealthy classes might gather.

The plan was grand. But it also had a strange plausibility. New York is full of institutions that began with the ambition of a single person who simply decided that something should exist and then spent years convincing others to believe in it.

Delvey spoke about the project with total conviction. She behaved like someone who already possessed the financial backing required to make such a thing happen. And because she behaved that way, many people assumed the money must exist somewhere.

This is one of the basic mechanics of social confidence. If someone carries themselves like a person whose financial arrangements have already been verified by someone else, most people will not ask too many questions.

III. Hotels

Hotels played a central role in the Delvey story.

Luxury hotels are perfect environments for people living inside ambitious performances. They operate on the assumption that their guests are legitimate. The bill will eventually be settled. The credit line exists somewhere. The guest’s presence itself is treated as evidence of solvency.

Delvey floated through some of New York’s most expensive hotels as if she were simply another wealthy European visitor temporarily residing there while arranging various cultural affairs. The lobbies, the restaurants, the rooms—all of it provided a stage set that reinforced the story she was telling.

Hotels also create a particular social atmosphere. Everyone is temporarily suspended between identities. People are traveling, negotiating, arriving, leaving. It is a place where someone can exist slightly outside the ordinary structures of verification.

For a while, the performance worked.

IV. The Father

Like many figures who construct elaborate new identities, Delvey carried with her a somewhat murky origin story.

She spoke of family wealth. Of connections. Of a background that seemed to hover somewhere between Russia and Germany, between modest beginnings and more glamorous narratives.

Her real childhood was more ambiguous. Her father had worked as a truck driver and later operated a heating and cooling business. It was a respectable, ordinary life. But it did not contain the European aristocratic wealth that sometimes appeared in Delvey’s stories.

This kind of ambiguity is not unusual among people attempting radical self-invention. The past becomes something flexible, something that can be rearranged slightly in order to support the person one intends to become.

In cities like New York, such reinvention is practically a tradition.

V. Dubai

The most extraordinary episode in the Delvey saga took place far from Manhattan, on a trip to Dubai. Delvey traveled there with a friend—a magazine writer who was documenting the glamorous world that Delvey seemed to inhabit. The trip was meant to be luxurious: private villas, elaborate dinners, the kind of extravagant travel that confirms a person’s social status.

For a few days everything unfolded according to the script. And then the bill arrived. The charges for the trip reached roughly $60,000. Delvey’s payment arrangements suddenly failed. The promised wire transfers did not appear. The hotel demanded settlement.

And the friend—the magazine writer who had been invited along for the ride—found herself responsible for the enormous bill. So Delvey left her there. Super bad business Anna baby.

It was a moment that perfectly captured the strange mechanics of confidence artistry. The performance works right up until the moment when reality insists on payment.

Someone, eventually, must pay the bill.

VI. Collapse

Once the financial machinery began to fail, the unraveling accelerated. Banks wanted documentation. Hotels wanted payment. Institutions that had briefly entertained the idea of supporting Delvey’s foundation began to ask more detailed questions about the supposed trust fund that would finance it.

The answers did not exist. The performance collapsed. Delvey was eventually arrested, tried, and convicted of fraud.

VII. The Strange Sympathy

And yet the Delvey story produced a strangely sympathetic public response. Perhaps it was because she had not simply been extracting money for luxury purchases. She had been trying, in her own improbable way, to create something. A cultural institution. A social space. A downtown hub for art and ambition.

The plan was impossible, but the ambition was recognizable. Many people—especially those drawn to cities like New York—understand the impulse to reinvent oneself, to construct a future through sheer force of belief. Delvey simply pushed that impulse far beyond the point where the arithmetic could sustain it.

VIII. Coda

In the end, the most interesting thing about Anna Delvey may not be that she fooled people. New York has always been full of people attempting improbable social performances. The interesting thing is that, for a moment, she came very close to building the life she imagined. And perhaps that is why stories like hers continue to fascinate us. They remind us that the line between visionary and impostor is often visible only in hindsight.

Dedication: For Anna baby (you’re hot BTW) and all the beautiful strivers out there. May your world-curated art spaces someday come true.