Today’s soundtrack: how long has this been going on
Today at 5:02pm: watching a Bette Davis black-and-white



Today I got hit in the knee with a stick. At Hapkido. It was made out of bamboo; this thing grew out of the ground somewhere, under the sun, and its destiny was to be shaped into a shinai that a blonde chick would slam into my kneecap on the 31st of October, 2004. I’m limping but I guess, like most types of pain, it will go away in a week.

I remember standing on the sidewalk on Park Avenue and making a decision, in the spring of 1998. To my right was the tall black building housing the Japanese Consulate and the ticket to a year of my future. Across the street and down the block was The Corporation, where four years of my life had been spent sliding a mouse back and forth across a desk.

I had an acceptance letter in my hand. After two minutes of “What the fuck do I do” I snapped out of it and walked into the Japanese Consulate to tell them yes.

So I’d applied to the JET program and, once accepted, decided I was moving to Japan. My assigned post was in Saitama-ken, which I saw as the New Jersey of Japan: it was an hour outside the City (Tokyo), across the river.

The JET program is a Japanese-government run initiative whereby they ship English-speakers to Japan for a year, to teach English to schoolchildren. At the initial orientation I sat in a massive hotel ballroom with 2,000 twentysomethings from America, Australia, Canada, Great Britain and New Zealand.

At the time I met a half-Japanese guy named Seiji from Philadelphia. He now works for the NBA and lives a couple blocks away from me, in Little Italy, with his German wife. I also met Lawyer Girl, who is currently inside my apartment, taking a shower. She moves out tomorrow, I think, to take residency in her new uptown digs.

Sitting somewhere in that same ballroom was a guy named Kirk from California, whom I never met once the entire time I was in Japan. But three years later he’d move back to the ‘States, and two years after that he’d hang his hat in Manhattan’s East Village.

California Kirk’s a socially resourceful guy. Upon landing in New York last year he didn’t have any friends, so when he heard about a JET alumni reunion in the city, he went to socialize.

I didn’t attend; I was too busy chasing skirts probably, or working, or wallowing in my unfinished book, half-assed pages scattered around my desk like the feathers of a dead bird following a shotgun blast. But at this thing Kirk met a JET chick named Ann, whom I’d also never met. Ann befriended my buddy Outdoor Tony somewhere in Manhattan and eventually went on a date with Lam.

Which explains why the four of them showed up at my apartment last night wearing costumes. Tony and Kirk set up a Halloween party, and while I'm not the Halloween type, I hosted a small pre-party dinner for them and crew. Maybe 10 of us and some Thai take-out, nothing big. My apartment’s pretty centrally-located so I am able to maintain social relevance by virtue of geography. The rent’s a bitch but the outlay of social effort is minimal.

After everyone left to go to the party, Ed and Betty stayed behind so we could catch up. Ed and Betty are married. Betty’s stomach is about the size of a basketball and there’s a baby inside. Come December they’ll be a family of three. It’s good to talk with them because all of us go back years.

When I was whooping it up in Tokyo, Ed and Betty were in the third year of their relationship, investing in each other, eventually leading up to the rings they’ve got on. Then there’s me: the lovely painter I met and dated in Tokyo--she was such a sweetheart, even adjusting for the flaw-correcting lenses of retrospect--is also now married, to someone else. Last time I went to Japan she wouldn’t return my calls and it’s probably for the better.

Not my better, her better.

After Ed and Betty left I cleaned the place up, wiped the table down, did the dishes. Then I gathered up the leftovers and sat at the table and ate them. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror doing this, eating party remnants in my empty apartment, and tried not to make eye contact with my reflection.

This morning I woke up with an extra hour of Daylight Savings Time on my side. My couch was empty; Lawyer Girl spent the night at a friend’s place.

I had my morning coffee, wrote for a couple hours, fiddled with the volume knob on my stereo. Ironed my dobok carefully and went to Hapkido to get some exercise. Class went well, but then I got hit in the knee with a stick.