I’m on the road, be back in a few days. Ciao suckers.

Today’s soundtrack: I guess we didn’t have to kill her
Today at 9:02pm: Unconscious.


I heard Shady on the phone, complaining to his girlfriend about how Mike keeps slipping weapons into his bag. Ahahaha.

Do you ever feel like you’re descending into madness? Yes you do, admit it. You feel yourself sinking deeper and deeper until finally your feet touch the top of my head and you’re like “Move over” and I’m like “Fuck you, I was here first.”

Couple years ago I went out to LA to cover the E3 Conference (thanks naka-chan). It’s a huge videogame conference where they have every console and every goddamn game you can imagine on display. It was like being in an arcade the size of Maryland.

It was also like Las Vegas hopped up on testosterone and acne. After two hours of walking around I felt something similar to what I imagine radiation poisoning feels like. All those monitors and electronic carnage everywhere produced a peculiar sort of exhaustion in me.

That’s how I feel with all the coverage of the you-know-what. Wiped out but I can’t stop reading the feeds. And realizing what a luxury it is to be exhausted from coverage of the war. I feel bad for most of the people who are living it, on both sides.

Life goes on, for the privileged, I guess. I try to enjoy my relatively peaceful life ‘cause I’m sure in a past one I was a Roman slave or one of those guys who got wiped out in the first 30 seconds of D-Day. So last night Mike and Thomas came by with a couple bottles of wine and we ordered out from Pepe Rosso’s (little Italian joint over on Thompson, or is it Sullivan).

The guy who answers the phone at Pepe’s, I’m pretty sure it’s the cook, is kind of a prick and got all flustered with our confusing order. “Too many voices,” he yelled into the phone.

When our order came there was an extra and free panini in there, I guess he got confused.

No one makes a nine-dollar panini for free. Someone, somewhere in this city got screwed with their delivery last night.

If life has taught me anything it’s

1. it’s all about the haves and the have-nots, and
2. more often than not it’s completely random, having little to do with merit.

The people in Iraq or North Korea, what did they do? Nothing. What do they get? Screwed. Meanwhile people like Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il lead lives of opulence and splendor.

There’s something pathetic about me shoving an extra panini down my throat while my relatives eat wood but I can’t exactly Fed-Ex it to them. To the person who ordered a mozzarella-basil I’m sorry I ate your dinner.

Today’s soundtrack: You can’t resist her, she’s in your bones.
Today at 8:02pm: We ordered takout from Pepe Rosso. The cook there has got such a temper but the chow is decent for the sub-ten-dollar range.


My roommate Shady is leaving for Ohio this Wednesday to visit his girlfriend. He went down to Mike’s to borrow a carry-on bag.

“Thanks man,” said Shady, hoisting the bag up. Then he got suspicious (Mike’s a bit of a prankster) and started going through the pockets, thoroughly. “Heyyyy...the fuck is this?”

Mike and I both began cracking up. Deep in one of the compartments Mike had planted a pistol. A toy, obviously, but it was metal and would have showed up bright and clear in the x-ray machine, meaning Shady would get strip-searched or at least detained and miss his flight, which was the whole point. Shady’s famous for being a light traveler so it’s conceiveable he might never have looked in that particular pocket.

“You motherfucker!” said Shady, pulling it out in disgust. “The fuck are you, crazy?” We couldn’t stop laughing. At one point it was funny to make your friend trip, or accidentally trick them into touching a loose pubic hair (“dude, check this wire out”) but at our advanced age the stakes are higher. Oh to get an angry phone call from your friend at the detention center.

“I can’t believe you man,” said Shady, thoroughly checking the rest of the bag--and finding armature wire and a knife. “The fuck is the matter with you!”

Speaking of pranks I got an interesting prank call the other day. This person called me and didn’t say anything, just played a song into the phone. It was “Just a Gigolo” (a/k/a “I Ain’t Got Nobody,”) and it was the Louis Prima version, not the David Lee Roth.

I actually kind of like that song so I just sat down and listened to it for about thirty seconds. Whoever it was didn’t laugh or say anything, I pictured him or her calmly holding the phone up to a speaker. After half a minute I hung up, then felt that was premature and pulled the MP3 up on iTunes to finish it.

As me and Shady left Mike’s place Annie walked in.

“Hey Annie, what are you up to,” said Shady, towing the carry-on behind him.

“Going to the NBA game with Seiji,” she said. “What are you guys up to?”

With Shady distracted, Mike slipped the pistol into his bag again.

Today’s soundtrack: and now it’s six months older
and everything you want and everything you see...
Today at 11:32am: Trying to touch my toes.


The latest auto theft trend: Motherfuckers take your headlights. Apparently the xenon kind, featured in the stripped Audi S4 you see above, fetch top dollar underground. More proof that the thieves in this city will steal the milk out of your coffee. And while you look around for the thief I’ll get into your sugar.

Jenny came over this morning and we did our martial arts stretching. We’ve been shooting to do it every Sunday and so far we’ve succeeded, but I’m headed out to Wisconsin next weekend so there goes the rhythm. She’s crazy flexible whereas I’m very similar to an iron rod. My hamstrings in particular are tighter than...you know what, never mind. Why am I talking about my hamstrings.

Last night was good, it was a first meeting of the “NY Panel.”

The deal is this: I’m doing a workshop for some AsAm conference up at the University of Wisconsin. I wanted to discuss “Alternative Careers for Asian-Americans” so I assembled a six-person panel I’ll be bringing up there.

Anyways while I know all of the other five, they don’t all know each other, so I wanted to get everyone in the same room. (The same room in my apartment so I wouldn’t have to go far.)

Everyone hit it off and the conversation was lively. My friends know I’m a misanthrope that hates a good many things but paradoxically, I enjoy bringing people together. (Certain people anyways, I mean you’re not going to see me throwing a party for neo-nazis, internet stalkers and Al-Qaeda.)

Afterwards we went out to a Shanghainese restaurant, had chow and some laughs. I felt proud, like I did a good thing. I am doing a good thing. I’m not all bad. I’m normal.

I hope the conference goes well, although I have absolutely no idea what to expect of Madison, Wisconsin. We’ve got a day after the conference to check the town out. I picture us walking into a bar and it’s just filled with actual cows, standing and talking like in “The Far Side.”

Friday night I was at Hapkido with Chun-Li (not her real name, you fools) and afterwards we went out to get something to eat.

Post-chow we headed to her neighborhood (the East Village) in search of a decent cup of coffee. We couldn’t find a café to our liking and the Cooper (an E.V. standby diner) was closed for renovations so we ended up going back to her place.

It’s been so long since I hung out in the East Village, or even at a girl’s apartment. East Village apartments are amazing things, tiny rabbit hutches brimming with multicolored and supercompressed lives of urban vitality. I’d forgotten the whole vibe, the steep staircases, the narrow hallways, the intimate bedrooms.

I sat on the floor, in the tiny space between her bed and the wall while she broke out some tea. Chun-Li’s got a pretty good CD collection so we rifled through it and shit-shot while the clock went through several revolutions.

Dinah Washington, Ibrahim Ferrer, Ella Fitzgerald, Sade. We talked late into the night while outside, down in the city, traffic moved past and people headed in and out of bars, unaware of us and us unaware of them.

Today was Sunday, sorry for jumping around so much but wait a second fuck that, I’m not sorry. After Jenny left I had breakfast with Seiji down at the diner. Post-chow we headed into Chinatown in search of Korean bootlegs for me and cleaning supplies for Seiji. His new apartment is two blocks away from me.

Sunday afternoon Logan stops by with his girlfriend, K.

Both Logan and K do tai chi (slightly different styles though). We ended up on my roof so we could check each other’s styles out. I suppose if it was 200 years ago one of use would have had to fight another to the death. K showed us a beautiful tai chi sword form. She had to use an umbrella because I don’t have any Chinese swords lying around the apartment, and Shady’s sword is the Japanese kind.

Then Logan did an empty-handed tai chi form and no lie, the shit was like fifteen minutes long. I couldn’t fucking believe it. If I had to do a form that long I would stop in the middle to use the bathroom. I also couldn’t believe how good Logan is, his shit is tight, this motherfucker should be on a mountain somewhere while disciples fetch him tea.

Lastly I demonstrated a hapkido form that was pretty Yang (as opposed to Yin). My whole life I’ve been a pretty Yang kinda guy so I’m trying to get Yin. Anyways in the middle of the form I lost some focus and suddenly hoped there weren’t neighbors watching the three of us Asians up on this rooftop, spinning and kicking air.

The above paragraph just made me think of Margaret Yang from Rushmore. I think I wouldn’t mind having a Margaret Yanglike girlfriend.

We hit a Vietnamese restaurant for dinner, then afterwards Shady and I headed over to Joanne’s place in deep Chinatown. Her apartment is small, tidy but comfortable, a girl’s apartment. I read about the war on her laptop and felt sick while she and Shady watched the conclusion of some Japanese movie.

Jo wanted to come over to get some software from me, so the three of us headed back together. Jo brought a movie with her, Shaolin Soccer.

I got this sudden craving for fortune cookies, so I stopped at a Chinese bakery to get a whole bag, roughly the size of my head.

“How much?” Jo asked the woman, in Chinese.

“$1.50,” the woman replied, also in Chinese. After I’d paid we saw a smaller bag of fortune cookies that was labeled $2.25. Guess I got the Chinese price! Psyched. Then Jo stopped off at a restaurant and picked up some chow for her and Seiji.

The four of us watched Shaolin Soccer which is a fucking bizarre movie with some extremely weird humor. I liked it because it made me laugh out loud, the real kind of belly laugh where snot will fly out of your nose and onto your friend’s shoulder and you hope they don’t notice.

Something bizarre happened with the fortune cookies. Every time I reached into the bag and grabbed a cookie, I would break it open to find it empty and fortuneless. Seiji too! But whenever Jo or Shady pulled out a cookie it always had a fortune. “I guess the fortunes are only for Chinese people,” said Jo, laughing.

At the end of the bag I finally did get a fortune. You know what that shit said? It said

God has made you a face but you made another for yourself.

The fuck is that supposed to mean? What are they trying to say? And how the fuck did this bag of fortune cookies get a Korean/Japanese/Irish detector for Seiji and I?

I had a good weekend. I saw friends and did things that interested me and felt free. Tomorrow I have to go back to the savage hellhole of work and kill my passions for five consecutive days, eight hours at a time. Looking forward to the next weekend though.

Today’s soundtrack: for a fake Chinese rubber plant
Today at 8:02pm: no shock, no awe


The other day it was gorgeous out, 60-something degrees with that feeling of Spring in the air. I got off work at five, came downtown and called Seiji (a/k/a McCarthy) in the office. These days he works until like 11p, it’s pretty sad.


ME: Get me McCarthy.

SEIJI: What’s up.

ME: What time you getting off work?

SEIJI: Late.

ME: It’s gorgeous out, me and Mike and Shady gonna go get dinner at a sidewalk café, whyncha come out.

SEIJI: Is that what you little hippies like to do? Go frolic in the leaves and eat your little cous-cous? I’m trying to earn a paycheck here, you’re wasting my time. Go hug a tree you little hippie bastards, I got work to do. Is that why you’re calling me? Is that all you got for me? You’re wasting my time. [click]

Seiji hung up and I laughed. I sorted through some bills then figured I’d go to the barber while waiting for Shady to come home.

At the barbershop the lady is massaging my head in the sink when my phone goes off. I let it ring.

Afterwards I check the messages, it’s Seiji apologizing for being so “blunt,” something about having a rough day at work. I call him back at the office.

“You listen to me McCarthy, you little son-of-a-bitch,” I say. “The Seiji you were thirty minutes ago--see, that’s the Seiji I always knew you could be,” I say. “That’s the Seiji that will do well in this city. Then you call me and fuck the whole thing up with this mewling little bitch-ass apology. The fuck is the matter with you?”

He began babbling some explanation while I reached for the “End” button.

Today’s soundtrack: it happened in Monterey
Today at 8:02pm: at the dojang


Today is Seiji’s birthday and the U.S. began bombing Baghdad. I watched the President give his speech on television. After that Seiji came over because I told him I’d take him out for a birthday drink. We went to a saké bar called Chibi’s with three German people.

Both the pro-war and the anti-war people are driving me nuts. Both have arguments that are easy to refute. People seem to easily hew to one side of the line or the other, only paying attention to the facts that support their particular argument. The worst are the retarded, uneducated conspiracy theorists you overhear on the subway.

The anti-war arguments I’ve heard are all ridiculously simplistic and seem to be spoken by people who choose to ignore certain facts and fail to propose realistic alternate solutions. The pro-war arguments are similarly simplistic and seem to be spoken by people completely removed from geopolitical reality and with little concept of the power of hatred.

What to believe? Here are some things reported by major news publications:

- Saddam has ordered hundreds of replicas of U.S military uniforms. The plan is to have his men dress as American soldiers and then brutalize Iraqi citizens on videotape. The footage would then be shown on Al-Jazeera as “proof” of American barbarism.

- Terrorist retaliation could come in the form of “slow-motion suicide bombers”--terrorists willingly infected with smallpox, sent to America to hang out in crowds and cough on people. All they’d have to do is walk around Disneyland, hang out in airports or go to crowded shopping malls.

- The projected cost of the war will far exceed any profits the U.S. could gain by “liberating” Iraqi oil, a fact the White House is aware of.

- One country that actually supports a war with Iraq...is Iraq. A survey of Iraqi citizens (as reported in Newsweek) claims they believe their situation cannot get any worse and would thus welcome a U.S. invasion to depose their dictator. Their lives under Saddam (and the sanctions that came with it) are miserable compared with their living conditions in 1980.

Which of these do you believe? I think people only believe what they want to believe. If one of the aformentioned paragraphs supports your inherent view you believe it, if not you say it’s propaganda.

What bothers me the most is that the countries that threatened U.N. Security Council vetoes--Russia, China, France--all have multi-billion-dollar contracts with Iraq. They would lose these contracts if war is waged with Iraq. I hate when people talk morals when they’ve got billions of dollars at stake. You can’t believe people where money is involved, whether they’re from the U.S. or someplace else.

The only fact I can believe is that the war is on, no matter what. Missiles have been fired, bombs dropped. This being the case, I think the only thing that everyone hopes for in common is that the war is over quickly.

So many paradoxes. No one likes war, and yet war has shaped the borders of most countries on the planet today. The borderlines between countries are not there because they flipped a coin; they’re there because that’s where the last soldier fell.

If you look at a globe, all those little colors signify where people live. The space between the colors is where people died.

I'm bored so I had to start a new journal. I dunno how long I can keep it up for but I'll give it a shot.

Today’s soundtrack: a brand-new Cadillac and a winning lotto ticket
Today at 7:02pm: Sitting outside, enjoying the nice weather and bus fumes.


So far a whopping two people have signed up for my class. At this rate I might as well hold it in my living room.

I think I’ll start each class off with a grueling regimen of exercises. I mean physical exercises, like push-ups et al. I’ll run it like a drill sergeant.


STUDENT #1: But what did you think of my character exposition?

ME: DROP AND GIVE ME FIFTY!

STUDENT #1: Fifty character expositions?

ME: FIFTY GODDAMN SITUPS YOU MEALY-MOUTHED MAGGOT! NOW MOVE IT, HEMINGWAY!

STUDENT #2: Rain, I finished my--

ME: (Grabbing his pencil and breaking it in half) WHAT THE HELL DID YOU JUST CALL ME?

STUDENT #2: Rain.

ME: AND WHAT DID I ASK YOU TO ADDRESS ME AS?

STUDENT #2: (Sighing) Sergeant Sphincter, I finished my plot outline--

ME: WELL GOOD! MAYBE NOW YOU CAN FINISH SCRUBBING THE LATRINE WITH IT! DOES ANYBODY ELSE WANT TO FINISH THEIR PLOT OUTLINE?

Sergeant Sphincter, I need some help with the title of my short story about the blind woman. I’m thinking of calling it “The Woman Who--”

THAT IS THE STUPIDEST TITLE I’VE EVER HEARD! YOU WANT A TITLE, I’LL GIVE YOU A TITLE! LET’S CALL IT “CLUSTERFUCK SPAM-DIGGY IN THE HOUSEFRAU!”

STUDENT #1: You know what, this sucks. I’m outta here.

STUDENT #2: Me too. You’re short, you have bad skin and both of us hate you. (slamming door)

ME: I’m so very lonely.

If the two people who signed up are actually reading this, I’m just kidding about that whole Sergeant Sphincter business. (Colonel Colon would never stoop to the Sergeant’s behavior.) Help me to help you.

Today’s soundtrack: not who I used to be

Today at 4:02pm: In Chinatown, shopping in vain for unscented dryer sheets. Apparently most 212 Chinese hang-dry their laundry.


Fruitless scheming.


I need to share a bed with a woman in a bad and major way. For at least one night I need to forget the rest of my life and lie in bed wrapped around a pretty woman. I need to feel like I understand her, she understands me and our bodies understand each other, even if it’s just for that one night.

Then again mindless sex minus any modicum of understanding might not be the most terrible thing in the world either. Must investigate.

So The Corporation is sending me on a “spy mission.” Industrial espionage--sounds exciting, right? Well it ain’t, not even remotely.

Here’s the deal: I’ve been freelancing at this particular corporation on-and-off since ’94, doing a particular kind of product design. Bottom line, I know the business pretty well but am not technically an employee of The Corporation, though I’ve been there longer than half my department.

One of the competitors of The Corporation is having a big two-day conference down in Arizona. Independent contractors are allowed to attend so The Corporation registered me for the event (which costed 950 clams, for fuck’s sake).

They’re putting me up for three nights in a posh resort outside Phoenix. Best part is the conference only runs 9am - 3pm, so the rest of the time I can fuck around.

I called the resort to see what kinda place it is, and rooms run $350 to 5 bills a night. All my meals are covered and I get a rental car. Then I get to thinking shit, why don’t I know any single females in Phoenix?

A-ha! Sunny lives in L.A.!

Sunny is a girl who used to live in New York and as far as I’m concerned, she and I were supposed to happen. Partially because we’re both Asian and our first names are symmetrical but mostly because we hit it off famously.

We met at a party on West 14th. Exchanged numbers and saw each other once or twice but the timing was wrong, I made a bad decision or two and the cruel job market offered her a salary in L.A.

At our parting we said we’d keep in touch, you never know what will happen in the future, etc. and I got a fleeting kiss on the lips (probably because she was drunk). It was at some bar on 1st Avenue. I’d met her on the west side and said goodbye to her on the east side. The next day at work I smoked a cigarette in front of The Corporation and scanned the sky, foolishly hoping I’d catch a glimpse of her plane.

So my plan is this: I’ll give Sunny a ring, see if she can’t wrangle a day or two off work and come down to Phoenix. Our chemistry would be worth a short flight, right? With three nights in a resort that’s paid for? And I’ve got a room with two double beds, leaving plenty of room for her to go Platonic if I make an ass of myself during dinner.

I couldn’t find Sunny’s contact info in my laptop--I lost some data when I switched to the new machine--so I called a mutual friend.

“Sunny?” he said. “Yeah, I got her e-mail, let me dig it up here...man that girl is so cute...she’s really got something....”

“Tell me about it,” I said.

“Ah, here it is,” he said...

...before adding, suddenly: “Dude, you know she got engaged, right?”

Oh hell.

In The Mood For Producing Printed Matter

Hey so the AAWW has asked me to teach a six-week Intro to Fiction course. Here’s the copy:

The Story That Writes Itself
N. Rain Noe

This introductory course will cover the basics of fiction writing, including plot, character development, pacing and narrative by using freewriting and more structured assignments, and peer workshopping of student pieces.

The class will also focus on:

- using New York City as source material
- gaining a holistic understanding of how writing connects to the other areas of life
- exploring the value of each person's own experiences and perspectives, and integrating these unique aspects into students' writing.

Wednesdays, April 2–May 14, 7–9 PM
$250 general, $225 members
12 max enrollment


Taking my class will:

- release you from the inner demons that hold you hostage
- increase penis length/breast size
- solve the Bush/Iraq crisis
- remove plaque buildup and help control the tartar that causes cavities
- increase combat effectiveness by up to 33%
- make you a much better person (than John Wayne Gacy)

To register, call the AAWW at 212.494.0061. (Unless you’re John Wayne Gacy, in which case you are barred from my class. I can’t do nothin’ for you, Gacy.)

Today’s soundtrack: don’t leave me high, don’t leave me dry
Today at 1:02am: scarfing leftovers


So that night at the bar, Handsome took a picture of me talking to that Japanese girl (the one who never responded). He e-mailed it to me with the line “Here, I’m finished jerking off to it” even though the girl doesn’t look so hot in the picture.

But anyways it got me thinking we should start a jerk-off chain letter. “You MUST beat your meat to this letter ten times in ten days. Then you must send it to an additional ten people who will choke the chicken, beat the bishop, play pocket pool. Then something MAGICAL will happen! That magic will announce itself as a burning sensation in your crotch.”


Hey remember the girl with the braids, at that other bar, the one I didn’t initially want to talk to? Well I got her e-mail address (verbally) which was basically her name followed by @hotmail.com.

But here’s the thing: Her name can be spelled several different ways and I wasn’t sure which spelling to use. I didn’t want to send an e-mail to a crapload of people with similar names so I’ve been holding off on e-mailing her.

But, she actually tracked me down! She did a web search and found an old e-mail address of mine. I just checked the account yesterday for the hell of it and found her letter. Next thing I know we’re on IM.

Alas, the girl is interesting and if my eyes can be trusted she’s cute, but she’s too, too young. Not counting the times I was in college, I dated a college girl once and I’ll never do it again. Number one I don’t need the drama, number two I can’t fucking afford it. You ever date someone with no income? It’s like they opened a black hole right next to your bank.

On the other hand, there’s no crime in just hanging out with her, right? She’s got a pretty interesting story and such very interesting hair...

She’s coming in Friday, but we’ll see if we actually end up meeting up. A week ago I had dinner plans with this super-hot poetess but she bailed on me. It’s the second time I’ve been bailed on by a poetess. So my luck is pretty up and down.

Today’s soundtrack: bigger and better and faster and wetter
Today at 8:02pm: “Counseling” a friend whose girlfriend is treating him like shit. I swear there’s something in the air


Keeping a car in Manhattan is no easy task. Free street parking on weekdays is like the G-spot--you’ve heard it exists and you might have passed it once or twice, but no one’s actually seen it. So a couple years ago I coughed up the dough for a monthly garage space. It’s similar to when the doctor asks you to cough in that they’ve both got you by the balls.

Weekends are a different matter. Saturday and Sunday I can leave the car on the street right outside my house and often do, just making sure I drag it back to the garage before Monday morning.

Today was a Tuesday and I overslept as usual. I ate my pineapple, suited up and on my way out the door, I noticed my car keys sitting on my bureau. That’s interesting...how can they be here, when they’re sitting in the ignition of my car parked at the monthly garage?

...Fuck.

I run downstairs, dreading the pile of tickets I’m sure to spy sprouting off my windshield like bright orange fungus. How could I fucking forget and leave the car in a weekday-illegal spot for two fucking days?

I get outside, frantic. The good news is there are no tickets. The bad news is there’s no fucking car.

From work I call the New York Sheriff’s department. Can you believe NYC has a sheriff? I’ve never seen the bastard but apparently he’s in charge of towing cars.

“Yup, we’ve got it,” says the helpful woman on the phone. “It’s at the impound lot on 38th Street and 12th Avenue.”

“What’s it gonna cost to get it out?”

“Lessee...” says the woman, typing something. “Says it was towed at 11:45am Monday. So if you pick it up before 11:45am today it will be $185. If you pick it up later, it will be $200-something with the extra storage fee.”

I look up at the clock: 11:01am.

Trying to get across midtown Manhattan in a taxi is like being stuck in a crowded parking lot that moves a few feet every minute. I make it to 12th Avenue by 11:30am, stressed that I had to ride in a taxi. Those guys are my mortal enemy.

The New York City Pier 76 Impound Lot is one of the shittiest structures you can imagine. It’s a big-ass corrugated tin warehouse, the kind of thing they blow up in low-budget TNT action flicks starring Treat Williams or Richard Chamberlein.

The waiting room is done up in disgusting late 1960s rec-room wood paneling and worn vinyl seats with ominous stains on them. There are six bulletproof windows for the clerks, but only one is being attended. Waiting before me is a construction-worker type, a clean-cut businessman type and an old-school Brooklyn taxi driver, apparently accompanied by his mother. The taxi driver keeps muttering “Dey set me up, Dey set me up.”

The worst part about having to wait was listening to the taxi driver rip into his mother, who seemed about 90 years old. She would ask questions about what happened to the car and he’d start yelling at her going “Dey set me up! How many fucken times I gotta tell you, you don’t unnerstand.”

You have to wait forever. First they take your application to get your car back and then you fucking wait. The woman processing mine was a total DMV-style bitch and I found myself wishing something bad would happen to her when, all of a sudden, something did.

She fucking fainted.

I didn’t actually see her faint--I was sitting on one of the cumshot-covered chairs--but there was this commotion behind the windows and I see people scurrying around back there going “She fainted, she fainted, someone call EMS.”

All of us in the waiting room let out a collective groan. There was no way this was gonna speed things up.

The ambulance comes, and the EMTs roll a stretcher back into the clerk area. I can’t see what’s going on back there but after ten minutes they came back out and the stretcher was still empty. I wasn’t sure if that meant she was dead and they were waiting for the coroner or if she magically got better. I hoped she magically got better so she could process my fucking application and I could get the fuck out of there.

As they wheeled the empty stretcher out of the room, I thought it would be funny if they suddenly picked up the taxi driver’s mom and just threw her on there, wheeling her out without a word.

Nearly two hours after I’d arrived, they called my name at the window. Tried to charge me the 200-something but I raised a fuss about how I showed up before 11:45am. I almost said “It’s not my fault the clerk died” but once I got up to the window I saw she wasn’t dead, just sitting back there looking dazed and taking a rest. Which is probably what she looks like when she’s “working.”

They ended up charging me the $185, then gave me an official-looking slip of paper. “Take this around back to the garage. Give it to the attendant and they’ll take you to your car,” they explained.

I hand my slip of paper to the attendant, who’s super-friendly. “Do you have your key, sir?” he asks.

Faaaaaaaaack! I left the key in my bag, back at the office! You can’t make this fucking shit up.

Back in a taxi, headed back across town towards The Corporation. I take the elevator upstairs, enter my office, grab my bag and rip the key out of it like I’m trying to start a lawnmower. Take elevator back downstairs, hail third taxi of the fucking day and head back, back, back across town.

The light at the end of the tunnel was that by the time I got back, the super-friendly attendant was gone, replaced by a moderately hot super-short Latina woman with big brown eyes. “I’ll take you to your car,” she said, and proceeded to walk me across the lot. I bet her hair smelled nice but wasn’t close enough to tell.

She looked at the slip of paper. “It’s all the way at the end,” she said. The lot was huge so we had a long ways to go. I thought about what I would say when we finally reached my car. Something along the lines of “Hey, let’s just get in my car and drive. We’ll head up to the George Washington, cross it and never look back. I’ll take you out west where we can forget all this municipal bullshit and just start over, you and me.”

Instead when we got to my car I said, “Do you want a lift back to the booth?” and she said “Nah, s’aright.”

By far the most innovative door buzzer I’ve ever seen.
(I wonder what the fuck a Nutsy’s is.)

Today’s soundtrack: Young ones are waiting in line...
Today at 2:54am: Inhaling sharply through my nose.


When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Then carry it around with you and when you find someone with papercuts, push them to the ground and rub the lemonade into their cuts. You can increase the horror of this act by dressing as a professional clown.

Alright I don’t know where that came from.

Best snack food in the world: Kasugai Roasted Hot Green Peas. They give you crazy wasabi noseburn. You know how to get rid of wasabi noseburn, right?

Next time you’re eating sushi and you accidentally hit that motherlode of wasabi and get that so-this-is-what-mustard-gas-is-like sensation, inhale sharply through your nose. Clears it up right away. I saw it on a Japanese TV show and it works like a charm.

Prior to the other night, the last time I went out drinking with Seiji we were on the other side of the planet and Clinton was in office. Ah, the good old days.

The other night we came out of a New York bar around 4am and Seij was pretty hammered. I’d forgotten he gets real honest (of the “I love you, man” variety) and about ten years younger when he’s drunk.

“Dude you are fucking weird,” he slurred, as I started the car. “YOU are a weird motherfucker.”

“Izzat so,” I said, pulling into traffic.

“You fucken ditched me in K-Mart today,” he blathered. “I’m hanging out and all of a sudden you just fucken disappear.”

“I told you, I went to the register to pay for my shit. You were dicking around in the soda aisle.”

“My friend fucken ditches me at K-mart. Then we’ll be walking down the street or some shit and you’ll just cross all of a sudden and I’m like, where the FUCK did Rain go.”

“Gimme a break, I thought you were right behind me. Whaddaya want me to do, get a fucking leash? I’m gonna get one of those little twirly orange leashes and fucking attach you to my belt loop, how’s that.”

“Dude I’m real, I’m really thankful you’re letting me crash your place,” he blurted.

“Ah get outta here,” I said, wishing the light would turn green so I could get this drunk motherfucker home. “How many times did I crash your grandmother’s place in Tokyo.”

“So the thing I’ve noticed about you is this: You’re fucken weird. You have all these little weird fucken things....fucken freak. And like, you don’t really care about holding people’s hands and shit, like you expect people to get their own fuggin shit together. But when it really counts you care. It’s huge that you’re letting me crash your place.”

“S’not a big deal,” I said.

“Like the fuggin, birthday party you threw for me in Japan, that was pretty cool...even though it was a goddamn month after my birthday,” he muttered.

“You were in fucking India! What was I gonna do, put everyone on a boat to the fucking Ganges? Next time I’ll rent out the fucking Taj Mahal.”

“I know, I know. I’m just saying....”

Actually I remember that party. It was a surprise and we had it at Alison Chin’s house. Seiji got severely drunk and told me what a “good friend” I was. Then I had to physically restrain him from pissing in Alison’s washing machine.

“Dude get off me just let me fucken DO IT! It’ll be so funny,” he’d said, trying to push past me. Yeah and I’m the weird one. I shoulda let him fill Chin’s machine, I bet she woulda tore his ass off in the morning.

Today’s soundtrack: My frame is here but the mind is gone, gone away
Today at 12:32pm: Trying to hold position, but shaking.


After the events of Saturday night I went to bed around 5am. Sunday morning I slept through the house phone and the cell both ringing around 11am. At 11:30am I finally picked up. If I had hair it would have been all disheveled and fucked-up.

“Rain, it’s Jenny. Did I wake you up?”

“S’okay,” I said, trying not to sound gruff.

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Will you be ready?”

“I’ll be ready,” I said.

Jenny’s been flitting in and out of my life for the past five years. I met her right before I moved to Japan. I have an inkling if I hadn’t gone to Japan, Jenny and I might have started dating, and perhaps never stopped.

When I came back from Japan a year later I had strings that belonged to a lovely and gracious painter back in Tokyo. I met up with Jenny again, we had dinner at some Asian joint on the west side, but a little something had changed in both of us and the timing was all wrong. We became friends.

Here’s a picture of Jenny from a couple years ago:

She studies Tae Kwon Do and I study Hapkido. Both arts have kicks, and lately our flexibility’s gone to shit so we decided to do something about it. On this Sunday morning Jenny and I are supposed to meet up to stretch.

At 11:50am Jenny showed up looking, unfortunately, cute as all hell--I don’t need these kinds of distractions--and then she changed into her workout gear, which didn’t ameliorate the situation. I am a slave to testosterone.

After gulping down my coffee I went into my room to change and tried to clear my mind. As I took my shirt off, she came to the door of my room and peeked in. “Have you always had that?” she asked, drawing a grid on her stomach with one finger and pointing to my stomach with the other. I’m pretty scrawny but sort of cut.

“It goes up and down,” I explained. “If I eat shit for two weeks it goes away, if I go to the dojang every other day it comes back.” I know Jenny probably sees me as just a platonic friend but I couldn’t help feeling some kind of sexual tension, and either that or the coffee started to make me jittery. I was thankful when she turned away from the door and I hastily changed.

We stood across from each other and swung our legs back and forth, up, down, side, back. Unkinked all of our joints top-to-bottom. After the dynamic stretches we moved on to the static and isometric.

When you’re assisting someone in the butterfly stretch (sitting with their feet drawn towards their crotch, soles touching), it requires you to lean over your partner and gently press down on their thighs while they exhale deeply.

I’ve done this a thousand times at the dojang with my sweat-covered hapkido mates and it’s not an issue; but the only times I’ve been this physically close to a woman in my apartment, we were exchanging fluids.

I tried to clear my mind and tried desperately not to inhale with my nose so I wouldn’t smell her perfume or shampoo or whatever. You are confused. You just broke up with a girl recently. You just went from a period of constant sex to no sex and now you’re feeling the burn. You don’t know which way is up. Get it together, man.

After the stretching workout both of us were sweating. We took a few minutes to cool down, then she changed back into her street clothes.

“Are we gonna do this regularly?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “We should get it in while we can because we’re both single now. If you start dating someone and I start dating someone, it’ll be impossible to find the time.”

There was perhaps another sentence that could have come after this and made good logical sense, but it went unsaid as we both walked to the front door of my apartment. She gathered her bags, I made some perfunctory jokes about the amount of stuff she had to carry, and then she left.

I wanted to go back to my bed and stare at the ceiling but I was wide awake. And anyway, I don’t know which way is up; I might end up staring at the floor.

Today’s soundtrack: I try not to ruin the moment
Today at 10:02pm: It was Tommy’s turn to cook and he whipped up this delicious pork dish.


I’m pretty psyched--the Asian American Writer’s Workshop asked me to teach an Intro to Fiction class! It’ll be Wednesday nights from April 2nd to May 14th. I’ll post details here in a few days, after we put ink on the contract.

Sign up if you’re in the New York area and have an interesting in writing, I’ll do my best to make it worth your while. It’s entry-level so no Dostoevskys please. (You outclass me.)

The second “movie screening” I held at my place went well. I bought some inexpensive floormats at Pearl River Mart, borrowed a second couch-like object from Yuka’s and decked the place out with pillows. We had the DVD broadcasting into two TVs so everyone had a good vantage point. If you’re into Asian flicks, have an affinity for period pieces and a stomach for violence, check out “Musa.”

When you don’t have to work, lazy Saturday afternoons in New York are a good hang. Me and the fellas (Seiji, Mike, and Mike’s new Japanese protégé, Tommy) rolled around downtown in search of Pumas, cool objects, pretty girls and cheap eats. We musta walked thirty blocks.

At the Vespa showroom on Crosby we were checking out the sidewalk models. I guess we looked scruffy ‘cause one of the saleswomen came outside, got in between us and yanked the key out of the ignition. Like we were gonna steal the shit or something.

By late afternoon we’d wandered up to what passes for Little Tokyo around here. The four of us ate hot takoyaki on a 9th Street stoop, did rock-paper-scissors to see who would get the last piece and discussed digital cameras.

On the way back home we cut down 2nd Avenue. I bought a pineapple and then we got into an unfortunately loud conversation about people who eat poo (like for those fetish porn flicks). The internet being what it is, all of us have “accidentally” seen snippets of horrific footage.

Mike told us in Japan there’s a place where women eat nothing but caviar and champagne for two weeks, then rich businessmen pay to eat their shit. All of us contested him on the veracity of this but he claims to have a business card from the place. That is, for christ’s sake, the foulest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.

The four of us are a fun and decent bunch of guys, I swear. We might discuss fecal dining but we’d never steal a Vespa.

Today’s soundtrack: Between the superheroes, and the electric blanket is warm
Today at 11:52pm: Cursing the DJ.


I e-mailed both of the Japanese girls from the other night. The one I thought was interested didn’t respond, and vice-versa.

The girl who did respond, Megumi, invited me to come by the bar Saturday night ‘cause she’d be working.

At 11pm I’m in the car, reversing for half a block on Hudson Street (to snag a bypassed parking space). It’s Annie’s birthday and I’m in the car with Shady, Annie, San Francisco Irene and their friend Mike Q.

At the door of Groove Jet we get to skip the velvet rope nonsense ‘cause Annie’s the birthday girl. Inside it’s the typical scene: Dim lighting, mediocre hip hop, too many bodies. I peel off from the group and nurse my Tanq & Tonic while holding up the wall.

A black guy starts talking to me and introduces me to his white girlfriend and I’m thinking, the fuck’s up with this. Maybe they’re looking for some freaky-ass three-way Benetton-ad action. I shoot the shit with them but keep a wall up, because I don’t really need an asshole the diameter of an ashtray.

The crowd is mixed pretty evenly, white, black, latino and Asian. There are cute girls of every race represented. One who catches my eye is an Asian girl with braided pigtails sculpted into some type of gravity-defying structure on her head. I’m a sucker for unusual hair.

Shady goes over and chats her up. A few minutes later I run into him at the front of the bar.

“Yo you should go talk to that girl Zoey, she’s interesting,” he says.

“Who’s Zoey, the girl with the hair?”

“Yeah man. She’s young though, still in college.”

“Ah, fuck that,” I say. I can’t fuck with semesters.

“Go talk to her anyway,” he says. “She’s standing by herself.”

I initially refuse, then realize I am getting complacent and fucking lame. It’s true that she’s too young for me, but mostly I don’t want to go over there simply because I’m scared to make an ass of myself. So I go over there.

I don’t waste more than 30 seconds on small talk (“been here before?” “do you know the birthday girl,” etc.) before I cut to the chase and get her story, and it’s a pretty interesting one. Korean but adopted by a Jewish family. Her siblings are black and filipino. Turns out we even went to the same college (I went to three). The difference is I was there ten years ago and she’s there now.

I spend the other half of the time talking to San Francisco Irene, who’s extremely cute and hot. Usually girls are one or the other (or let’s face it, neither) but she manages to be both.

Last time she was in town I detected something like flirting but failed to follow up on it. Even now I can’t get the thrusters up to more than 75% because of the intel I received. According to Annie, Irene’s always got guys on her shit but she’s clueless about it. I find that when that’s the case it means the girl is accidentally giving off a vibe that makes all guys think she’s interested in them when in fact she’s not.

I get Zoey’s e-mail address then Shady and I jet ‘cause it’s getting wayyyy too fucking hot in there. We roll over to the bar where Megumi works.

The next spot is fairly packed but I spot Megumi at the bar with a tray. I approach and say what’s up. She stares at me blankly. Takes me a second to realize...love doesn’t recognize me.

“Er, it’s me, Rain, I met you the other--“

“Ohhhhh shit, Rain!” she says, finally coming around, and she gives me a big hug like we’re old friends. “I didn’t recognize you! Last time you had glasses, right?”

How could she not recognize me just because of no glasses? I’m gonna put up two photos here. The first is the way I looked when I first met her, the second is how I looked on this night. Is it me or is she crazy.

We shoot the shit for a little but the bar is crowded and I can see she’s busy, so Shady and me bounce again. We head around the corner to Verlaine, where Shady knows the owner, then Seiji swings by. It’s drinks on the house so an hour later we leave a fat tip.

Around 4am I call Annie to see if she needs a lift home.

“Nah, I’m gonna stay out,” she says. “Irene got sick though, she went home early.”

“Where is she, at your place?”

“Yeah,” says Annie.

“I’ll check up on her when I get home,” I say.

“Dude you’re disgusting. This girl is probably vomiting and you’re still trying to get a piece,” says Seiji.

“Shuttha fuck up,” I say. “Just gonna check on her, see if she’s okay.”

I let myself into Annie’s apartment (I got the key) and check Annie’s room. Irene ain’t there. Later I found out she went to a different friend’s place. I go back to my place, lie down and stare at the ceiling.

Today’s soundtrack: fucking around in a crap game
Today at 11:02pm: sucking down a Stella


Check it out, my first “friends only” journal entry. How did it come to this.

I’ll tell you how it came to this. My girlfriend and I broke up a while ago, and she’s got a friend who reads my shit religiously and reports in. I don’t want to publicly write anything that may potentially upset my now-ex ‘cause

(choose one)

a. I’m a nice fucking guy
b. I don’t want to deal with the shitstorm and drama that seems to materialize out of nowhere.

Oh my GOD! Feels so good to write freely again. I’ve been censoring myself with all kinds of shit for the past few months. Wanted to write about issues I had with my now-ex but couldn’t.

Tonight I went over to Swim (it’s a bar on Orchard Street, not the verb) for Jeff’s birthday party. Handsome Dan told me Marz would be spinning, I recently found out that not only is Marz a DJ, he’s “the sickest battle DJ I’ve ever seen,” says Dan. Apparently he gained quite a bit of fame in this one DJ crew. At the age of 31 I’ve turned into a fucking square so I know nothing about such things.

I ended up in conversation with this Japanese girl. A lot of women at bars either find me too short to talk to, or maybe I’m just repulsive; so when a girl emits the “I’m interested in talking to you, Rain” vibe, it’s so rare for me that I always recognize it right away. This Japanese girl was standing near me and I got the vibe so I started talking to her. You know, the ten-second rule.

The best part is she was 29. I thought she was cute, although Handsome privately insisted she was not. I guess Handsome and me have different tastes. It could also be that Dan’s sexual taste buds have become deadened by sharing a bed with up to seven transvestite whores at a time, I dunno. Or was that me? I’ll have to look at the videotape.

Anyways the girl, I’ll call her Ryoko, and I are talking and this cat comes around. Asian American, seemed like a nice guy and he seemed like he wanted Ryoko’s attention so he stood on the other side of her to talk, perhaps hoping she would turn and box me out. But she didn’t, she kept talking to me so I just went with it.

Turns out Ryoko’s a stylist (for magazine shoots and shit), I make the gab and wind up with her card in my pocket. I break off for a little while to keep it fresh--nothing is worse than being a Klingon a/k/a cling-on--but we end up sitting at the same table later. She produces a small digital camera and starts taking pictures of me. So I broke out the Sony and took a picture of her.

I moved and sat next to her and we gabbed some more. The interloper was on the other side but she gave me more face angle. Eventually I got up to circulate again. Saw lots of old faces and Marz put some killer tracks on.

The interloper and Ryoko’s friends take off, then it’s just me and her. I have a tough time getting a read on Japanese girls--I found out, after the fact, that I had blown some killer chances in Tokyo--so I just hung.

We shot the shit for a little while then she mentioned that a friend of hers was spinning at this other party on 10th Street and I start reading into it--is she hinting that she has to leave? asking if I want to go? is she just talking? Living in Japan I learned that a lot of the time there are all sorts of hints being dropped that you’re supposed to pick up on. Ryoko had an accent but her English was pretty good.

Eventually Ryoko said she had to go and mentioned that she lived around the corner. I offered to walk her home but she said it was close. I thought that might signal the end of the mission but she urged me to e-mail her tomorrow.

I floated around a bit, then started taking snapshots of Marz while he was spinning. The waitress--another cute Japanese girl--passed by and started talking to me. “Is that a digital camera?” she asked (in fluent English). I almost made a wise-ass comment of the no-it’s-a-walkman-that-you-listen-to-by-pressing-it-against-your-eye variety but the censors caught it.

“Yep,” I said. “Do you shoot at all?”

“Oh, sure!” she said, accepting the camera from me. She turned and started lining Marz up in the viewfinder.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Megumi,” she said.

“Then this will be the Megumi Shot of DJ Marz,” I said, instantly regretting it. Why can’t I be smooth.

“What’s your name?” she asked. And so on, until ten minutes later we’re sitting at the bar talking. It went well at first and then I think she lost interest, I’m not sure. I packed up around 1:30am and got her e-mail address, just in case.

Back at the house I unloaded my digital photos to see if the first girl was cute (the bar was darker than that movie by Gaspar Noé). I still think she’s cute but her teeth are kind of, well, never mind.

I’ll hang out with her again anyway, if I get the chance; I like her personality. And she actually wanted to talk to me, even after ten minutes.

Today’s soundtrack:
but their empire crumbled ‘til all that was left
were the stones the workmen found.

Today at 8:02pm: At hapkido I had to teach today. I was a little nervous but it ended up being fun and I enjoyed it.


Two or three years ago Spaz got me a Nike watch for my birthday. I love that thing. But the battery died for it last month and I haven’t had the time to get it replaced.

I wore it while it was dead and blank for one week because I have a tough time breaking out of cycles. Finally I stopped wearing it and it sucks. Every place I’ve tried to get a new battery doesn’t have it. I’m gonna have to suck it up and go to Niketown because I’m tired of nervously glancing at my wrist on the subway.

Sit down while I tell you a boring story. (If you’re already sitting down then stand up.)

1994, ancient history, right? Back then DVD was just “David” with no vowels and I was a college senior looking for internships.

Two important things about New York: Connections and being in the right place at the right time. A friend of mine was abandoning his design internship at a corporation where he was making fifteen bucks an hour. For a college kid ten years ago fifteen bucks an hour was a lot of fucking cheddar.

The week he quit, I called the place up to ask if they had any openings. Why yes we do young man, it’s lucky you called here today. Pshaw, luck had nothing to do with it.

I dragged my portfolio up to midtown. I remember it was windy that day, when I got out of the subway my portfolio kept getting blown sideways, like I was levitating this big leather rectangle. I wore a cheap tie and the wind tried to take it off my neck.

The corporate people liked my work and I aced the interview, probably because I was filled with the dorky, cheerful optimism of a naïve college boy who’d never lost a friend, met people with herpes or gotten lost overseas. They hired me on the spot.

Afterwards I left the building and went around the corner to 50th Street where they used to have a bank of payphones. Struggling with my portfolio, I dug a quarter out of my pocket and called my parents like a freshfaced Iowan going “Mom! Dad! I got the part! I’m gonna be a big star!” What a dork.

I’ve been freelancing at that same corporation, on and off, for nine fucking years. And I realize this is the only institution I’ve attended somewhat consistently for that amount of time. College only took me five years. My stint overseas was a year and change.

Do you know what the benefit of going to the same place for nine years is? It’s that you get to see people age before your very eyes. I’ve seen a hot woman turned gaunt and tired. Seen people put thirty to fifty pounds on. Watched people’s hair go gray, watched their skin sag and their eyes sink. I look in the mirror and think I look the same since I’m the youngest one there. Sometime I’ll scan in my old and new ID photos and you can tell me if I’ve changed.

The bank of payphones is long gone off the corner of 50th Street; there’s nothing but a couple small holes in the resurfaced sidewalk. Stepping over the holes are people jabbering away on cell phones.

I look down at my watch, as if I can measure the passage of time, but find myself staring at my wrist again.

Today’s soundtrack:
they lived and they died
they prayed to their gods
but the stone gods did not make a sound.
Today at 8:02pm: Receiving a fortuitous cell phone call: Come home, roommate and his girlfriend are cooking pork chops.


I don’t mind walking down to 33rd Street to catch the train home. It’s only sixteen blocks from the office and it takes sixteen minutes. At 5pm it’s not like I’m missing anything anyway. Except maybe the chance to hear someone scream “Allahu Akbar” at Grand Central seconds before I am engulfed in angry flames.

Walking up- or downtown you average about a block a minute with the stoplights and occasional tourist asking for directions. I always thought I looked unfriendly and unapproachable--my friends have reported I’m everything from “stand-offish” to “sour”--yet people ask me for directions like there’s a GPS sign hanging above my head.

I’ve noticed tourists/non-New-Yorkers seem to be accustomed to a higher level of interaction in the street. A typical answer from me is that I’ll point in the right direction and say “Go two blocks, make a right” and keep walking, but the tourist seems to need more than this because they keep talking to me.

“So I just go two blocks and make a right?” they ask. They need affirmation and reiteration. What am I supposed to do, say it slower? Louder? Sing it? Launch the words into the sky with fireworks?

I got no patience; I’d make a terrible tour guide.


ME: And here on the left is the house where George Washington grew up.

RUBE: Where? On the left?

ME: No, it’s on the right, I just said “left” to fuck with you.

RUBE: What?

ME: It’s on the left.

RUBE: Well you don’t have to be so--

ME: That’s right ladies and gentlemen, the house he grew up in, there it is. I should probably add that not only was George Washington our nation’s first president, he also had a remarkable ability to understand fucking directions.

RUBE: Our tourguide seems to have an attitude problem.

ME: Many people say it was Washington’s ability to distinguish between left and right that won us the fucking Revolutionary War.

RUBE: I hate you.

ME: Well, both me and George Washington’s ghost hate you. Get off my bus.

I don’t mind giving you directions, but the thought of having more than ten seconds of repetitive conversation with a stranger in the street could not possibly appeal to me less. So I like to keep my responses as terse as possible. I substitute pointing for potentially wasted words and am very clear about block numbers.

My favorite was when this guy asked me where Bleecker Street was. I didn’t have to say anything, I just pointed above his head. He was standing under the sign that said “Bleecker Street.” If it was socially acceptable to slap people I would have walked away from the encounter with red hands.

I’d rather be someplace fucking else.