Scribbler's Cafe

The gift of loneliness

My footsteps progress on autopilot and lead me back to the train station. A few blocks from the entrance, the bright lights of Umeda’s entertainment district catch my eyes and it dawns on me that I don’t have to go straight home. I still have three more hours of babysitting gifted to me tonight. I turn left and enter the throngs of people swarming the karaoke boxes, hostess bars and plink plunking paccinko parlors.

Everyone is smiling. Everyone is with someone. Everyone is Japanese. Everyone, except me.

I pause with the crowd at a crosswalk, waiting for the light to turn and take me wherever it is that I am going. I stand on a step and sweep the crowd with my eyes. Men in business suits, red-faced and laughing, handsome young punks with orange-haired lolitas on their arms, musician types gesturing with their hands and carelessly knocking their over-sized cases through the crowd.

I wish that I could speak Japanese. The desire solidifies within me, turns into a deep ache that expands to fill my entire body cavity.

I find myself on Sakurabashi, in Kitashinchi – a tightly packed section of Osaka filled with the highest priced hostess bars in all of Japan. I know that when I walk these streets alone, at this time of night, all around perceive me as a hostess, possibly even a prostitute. (Yes, there is a huge difference between the two. Can you guess what it is?) But, such is the decorum and good manners of Japan that no one will leer or approach me. I am safe as long as I stay on the streets and out of the bars and designated pick-up places.

So, of course, I head to a bar.

Yet, Pocket is no hostess bar, or dark cavernous beer hall. Pocket is tucked away 9 stories up. All the seating is low leather loungers, pushed near plate glass windows that looks out onto the action below, if you so trouble yourself to look. A large shining grand piano fills the center of the room. When no one is tapping its keys, Norah Jones’ sultry ballads drip from the overhead speakers.

There is one other party here tonight, a group of businessmen (I count 12) impeccably turned out in black suits and crisp white shirts. They drink and laugh together, but stay firmly planted in their set of loungers. One even takes a turn at the piano, plays “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and “Someday My Prince Will Come” with a fair bit of flair and a slight jazz trill.

It is here that I pen these pages, sipping a bourbon on the rocks, entirely alone on my side of the room, still made up and beautiful from my tragic meeting with the artist earlier this evening.

I tire of this loneliness, but I also appreciate the new bravery it has birthed in me.

posted by Scribbler @ Monday, July 03, 2006