Yesterday was friend Satoko's birthday. Not really though. Her birthday's not until Monday. But she works on Monday so she's having her birthday Friday, today and tomorrow instead. I'll drink to that. And I did. Didn't take very much arm-twisting to get me murdering already sad songs on the karaoke system. Sure I protested lamely for several minutes, then proceeded to hog the mic for an hour or so. The voice of the drunken man is music only to his own ears, this I know. I've heard inebriated friends sing.
That was Friday - which at precisely midnight turned into today. Welcoming the chimes with too much food in CoCo's 24hr 'Californian' restaurant, accepting beer from strangers (rohypnol be damned), having difficulty with the chopsticks. Only DAY THE SECOND of Satoko's birthday marathon. We musn't go home, it is forbidden. Hmmm, it's rather cold - let's head to the beach.
Stood and faced a churning sea and felt not too much at all. Good. Congratulate myself on well adjustedness whilst skimming flat stones with, I felt, precision. Satoko proves much better at it however so I naturally walk off in a huff muttering stuff about 'kid's games'.
Fall asleep in the car and wake up miles away surrounded by mountains, covered in too many coats, heating full blast, lips dry and chapped and craving water. Satoko believes this temperature to be ideal. I concur that for the core of the fucking Earth, perhaps it would be. Still, it's her car. And it's still her birthday too.
And how lovely these here mountains, nestling as they are between metropolitan sprawls on all sides, these cities and towns also having beauty of sorts in the early morning delirium. And there are strange golf courses here, myriad aging people floating across the greens with outsize clubs and clownishly large, flourescent balls. Fascinates me. But the state I'm in - midway between cities, like the mountains, and between euphoria and hallucination - so does the skin on the backs of my hands. And Satoko's hair. So black. Does she dye it? If I touched it maybe I'd know. But maybe she'd kill me. Perhaps with a precision skimmed stone to the forehead. Kid's game. Must stop looking. Watch the old people. That's it. But there are stars. I see stars. For a stupid moment I am convinced I can see auras. No. Just tiredness and dehydration mixed in with the dreaded strangeness of impending contentment. Knowing it must end. Knowing a promise has to be voiced or shown or facilitated or would you look at that old guy go! My god, that's eighty-nine years of sushi and natto for you!
'Coffee?' say's Satoko, pronouncing the 'F's. Oh my. Please fuck up. Just once. Please.

Coffee, bread, and air oozed from pine trees massages our stomachs as the car motors down, always down, toward home. I'm drifting away. But home's not an option. I want to drive you some places says she. And she does. Beach towns, built up along cliffs. Like Clovelly. They make me fantasise earthquakes. Along this vast faultline, is this sensible homemaking? Then later, much later. Closer to where my bike has been left - outside the bar from so long ago. Satoko wants to sit in the park. We sit in the park. A chocolate hedgehog is made a present of to me. Satoko likes hedgehogs very much, I learn.
She is cold. Keeps expressing her coldness. 'Samui, samui, samui'. I suspect she wants holding. Wants something. A movement. An overture. Something musical. But from me, there is paralysis. There is nothing. Except this.

I sit drinking whiskey you bought me and I'm writing to you without writing to you at all. I'm posting it here for maybe eight people to read, but none of them you, in a language you don't really comprehend. For me it's a way to scream without you knowing. You could ask me what's wrong and the fact is you're perfect and as fucked as it is that's what's wrong. I deserve perfection less than you deserve me and that's a fact I almost can't comprehend. Yet it's how I think it must be. And if you take your sadness and hold it to mine I think we might find it's the same. Same, but different.