M Darts ch 11

Chapter 11

The Poet Tokyo

Dear Loop Garoo and all at the Castro,

Neon city. Invisible city. White trains shooting out on elevated
tracks. Oblique tall structures with noodle bars nestled in their
bowels. People. Japanese people. Everywhere. The faces not flat. Noses
straight. Black straight hair, black eyes, skin so pale. Like
porcelain. They crouch while they wait for the trains. Businessmen.
Young boys. But not the women. The women don't crouch.
I tried it and failed. I fell over. Don't say anything. The Poet knows
best.

In my room I have mats on the floor. The floor is mats. There is no
other floor. The floor is tatami. Or made of tatami. I don't know. The
first night I couldn't find my bed. I'd had only one saki, steaming hot
in a small clay black cup like an eggcup. Japanese saki. But I couldn't
find my bed. I looked out of the window. Neon city. Invisible
city.

Invisible bed.

In the bathroom the bath has a lid on it. It is plastic. The lid. The
lid and the bath are plastic. The bath is square and high. It comes up
to above my waist and I had to sit in it with my knees bent like I was
in a box about to be delivered somewhere. To an aquarium where the
other fish would look at me and grin sharkish smiles. In the window is
a mosquito net. Wire frame. To keep the mosquitoes outside from getting
in or the ones inside from getting out. Outside is neon and people.
Japanese people with their black hair and their noses. Black eyes. So
many. I had never seen so many. I had to hold my breath. Loop Garoo, I
said under my breath. Pinch me. Pinch me now.

I needed to sleep.

But the bed was invisible. At first. Because then at last I found it.
It was in a cupboard with a paper sliding door, rolled up like a
cigarette. I unrolled it and unrolled myself on top of it and slept.
Like a cigarette.

I woke up in Japan. Tokyo. A land of islands and millions of
people.
I have a guide. It is paper and thick. Tokyo Guide! it says but it
doesn't speak. On the front is a woman in white. A geisha. She doesn't
speak. It is rude for a geisha to speak unless spoken to. I read that.
What if she sees an accident about to happen? These are modern times.
She sees a businessman, Japanese, he is going to be hit by a car. A
silent Honda, a deadly Nissan. She wants to cry out but she can't. She
wants to scream, Watch out! but she can't. She bows her head and turns
clutching tightly the lily she is holding. She hears the crunch of car
on bone. The awful fatality. My Nissan! Oh my Nissan!

Later she thinks about it in that geisha mind. Perhaps she smiles. You
want to subjugate me. I'll show you, and your bastions. You
bastards.

Here the roads have no names. The areas have only numbers. Like this.
3-10-4. Or like this. 7-6-23. Please tell 16. How is Seven? And you
too? That is an address 16-7-2. I checked it out. It's a brothel above
a barber's. But best of all, in the barber's were two small boys. They
didn't see me, but I saw them. They were playing darts. Joyfully.

It is humid hot. Tokyo is hot and everywhere are people. Japanese
people. We crowd on trains on which women are groped but don't say
anything because that wouldn't be polite. Not polite to speak when
groped. Of course. Civilisation. The crunch of Nissan on bones.

My Nissan, oh my Nissan, I hear you cry. Through the ages and down
through the generations.

I look at my guide book but it doesn't speak. The geisha is still
there on the front. Will she smile? I flick through the pages and head
for Yoyogi park. That means generations and generations of trees.
Yoyogi. I like that. Most of Tokyo was flattened during the war. It is
all new. New houses. I read banks have now introduced 100 year
mortgages. From father to son. From mother to daughter. Down through
the ages. What is behind your face geisha girl?

In the Spring Yoyogi park is famous for its cherry blossom. Japan is
famous for its cherry blossom. Its saki. Its shinkansen. Its kamikaze.
Hiroshima. Iwa Jima. Nissan. There must be more. I have cleared out a
drawer because I know there is.

I walk under the trees. It is not Spring. There is no cherry blossom.
Fame is so fleeting. Love can be fleeting. Or it can last forever and a
day. I come across some Japanese dressed like Elvis. Come and stay with
me at the heartbreak hotel I cry and they smile and bow but don't
wiggle any hips. Their hips don't look capable. They are only Elvis on
the surface. Down below I don't know.

It starts to rain and the Japanese Elvises are washed away and I run
back to the metro through generations and generations of trees. I like
that. Running through generations and generations of trees in the
rain.

I get on the train and I am steaming. I smile and pat my wet hair and
I look around for eye contact to say look at me I'm wet, I got caught
in the rain. How about you? But the eyes don't make contact. They slide
away. Or they were never there in the first place. Japanese eyes in
Japanese heads.

I want my own Japanese eyes. To wake up in the morning in Japanese
arms. To kiss Japanese lips. Back at the hotel I fall asleep and dream
all this and more.

When I awake the city is awake. Neon city. Invisible city. The rain
has gone and in its place it has left night. Washed clean and ready to
be soiled again.

I go out. In my mind I retrace the steps I traced earlier with my
feet. Left right left right left right. The hotel is there anyway. Near
there. Shinjuku. Ni-chome. A place I'd read about in my dreams. An
Indian in my Cupboard. Why? I don't know why. It's just something I
wanted, want. Like The Castro, like the darts team, like Loop Garoo and
16 and Captain Vegas. Something to call my own, to make my own, to
exemplify its difference and extrapolate it. Gay Pride didn't work.
Look at us! Look at us. Through generations and generations. Of trees.
I don't know. Honestly, I don't know. Forgive me.

Things go around my mind.

Yoyogi Park. Generations and generations of trees. Yogi Bear, the best
kind of bear. John Logie Baird. Inventor of the television.

I am nearly there. I descend the steps. GBs. Gay Boys? Great Britain?
It's smoky. A square bar in the centre of a square room. Stools around
the bar in another square. A series of squares. Squaring the circle. A
lot of people. Not generations. One generation. English. American
maybe. And Japanese. What the world is waiting for. My world.

I reach into the bag that has been slung over my shoulder all day and
I pull out what I pull out. It is a dart-board and a set of
darts.

"Anyone for darts?" I say loudly. "Anyone for darts?"

Some people just look. One guy, American, fat, smans and hides his
sman in a drink of yellow liquid.

"Anyone for darts," I say again and I invoke you. Without you and your
belief in me I wouldn't have been able to do this. It wasn't a pull-off
label on a bottle of teriyaki sauce that sent me here, it was you. I
realise that now.

"The Loop Garoo kid sent me," I say. "From a land far away."

More smans and some people look away. Like that geisha and the
Nissan. Or not like her. Without the conflict. Not interested.

But someone is coming over. Black hair. Black eyes. Japanese and he
knows it. I know what he is going to say before he says it.

"Akinobu Matsumoto. I've been expecting you."

He says it, "Akinobu Matsumoto. I've been expecting you," and I smile
and we shake hands and bow. We have a game of darts.

The Poet

* * * * * *
The Poet, Tokyo

Dear Loop Garoo and all at The Castro,

Akinobu Matsumoto collects minerals. Today he took me to a conference
in Yokohama. We ascended in a turbo lift to the top of a tall tower.
There there were sulphides, silicates, hydroxides and sulphates as far
as the eye could see. They were all on wooden tables being looked at by
other Japanese. Japanese eyes, Japanese faces. We bought matching onyx
stones and smiled at each other. It was everything I always thought it
would be. My south-east Asian. Mine. For now and&;#8230;.

Let's see. Shall we? You said it, don't run before you can walk.
That's always been my mistake. I won't make that mistake again.

In the lift on the way down I told him I had cleared out a drawer for
him, a space for his clothes and our ears popped. It was the air
pressure. It can do that to you but it was still a surprise. I handed
him a boiled sweet and we sucked them together.

We walked down to the harbour and then along a dirty beach in the
shadow of rocking liners. There is a lot of work going on here. Akinobu
lifts his hands and points out to sea. He says many workers come from
Korea and a sadness clouds his face. I ask him if he minds leaving
Japan and he says no, it is his destiny. He says he has been expecting
me.

"I've been expecting you," he says. "Watch." And he takes out his onyx
stone and throws it towards the sea. Before it has landed in the waves
I have taken out mine too and I throw it too and they land together and
sink together. To the bottom. Together.

I tell him we have a lot to do. We sit on the sand and with a stick I
etch the current table for the darts league into its surface. He asks
if it is true that we are at the bottom and I say it is. I say it is,
but now the only way is up.

Akinobu Matsumoto is good at darts. About that there is no question.
He beat me easily with a six dart running streak. The only way is up.
And it will be in a multinational way. A team from members from all
over the world. United. Taking on the world. All their bastions.
The equator runs through the southern part of Japan.

Later we eat in a Japanese Italian restaurant. Spaghetti slides
through my chopsticks and miso soup splashes into my tomato sauce.
Akinobu laughs and says where did he find someone like me, where did he
find me. But I don't palpitate.

After, we go back to the hotel and make love on the single futon. We
unroll it together and then roll onto it together. The people in the
next room want to bang on the wall to tell us to be quiet but they
can't because they are Japanese. Instead an intermediary arrives. He
has a scroll and a voice like a small bell. We pull on yukatas and
challenge him to a game of darts. Akinobu lets him win and the
intermediary screams with joy. His voice is now more like a siren and
the couple from the next room turn up to see what has happened to their
intermediary.

They can see what has happened. He is speeding around our room like a
police car on acid. What's the moral?

Never trust an intermediary. If you want something doing then do it
yourself.

I get down on one knee so my knee is touching the strands of tatami of
the tatami mat. I take Akinobu's hand.

"Come back to England with me," I say.

"I'm coming," he says.

And we leave the intermediary and the couple from the next room who
are now all shouting loudly and we sneak into their room and make love
on their futon. Akinobu comes on the woman's kimono and we laugh. We
laugh because even for us that seems a bit extreme.

Extreme however is what I think we need. Now is a time for extremes.
If all else fails then go for the extreme.

Bury me with that.

Go for the extreme.
love The Poet.