Welcome

I walked into the Student Advice Center.  I had already phoned in, and asked to schedule a meeting with a ‘person that knows about housing.’  I was ushered to go in to the office in the corner.

A man with greying hair who looked good-natured greeted me; the kind of guy that you would like to run into if you were lost in a dark forest.

“So, what can we do for ya?” he asked, as he leaned onto his chair comfortably.

“Well,” I started hesitantly, “the house I was renting caught fire, and I was wondering about the legal process.  Such as, how much would housing insurance cover.” 

Without changing his expression – I was pretty sure he had heard some pretty weird stuff working there – he continued to explain that that the issues involving law wasn’t really his speciality, and that I should talk to other people in the center.

Not wanting to leave empty-handed, I asked what I was curious about.  I asked what kind of queries he got the most often then.

“Well,” he said, as he slumped on the reclining chair, “you know, you get your usual shady landlords trying to rip-off students that don’t know any better.  I then have to go check the houses and stuff.”

“And then, what happens?”

While I was riding the train, I was looking outside of the window absently.  The window displayed grassy fields, then houses, then rails…. It simply kept showing one ordinary scene to another, the distance I had to cover till I reached Ned’s.

I stopped looking outside of the window.  I saw that the man sitting in front of me was looking at me curiously.

 “Do you do art?”  He asked, a smile beaming on his friendly round face.

I looked at him, furrowing my eyebrows to say, ‘what do you mean?’  The man raised his hands, and fluttered his fingers.  

“Your fingers.  It looks like you do a bit of art.  Chalk, perhaps.”

“Oh no, I don’t do art.  My house simply burned down this morning.”

The man quickly stopped smiling.

I find myself coming to the sea again.  Funny, how I gave up on swimming years ago, yet I still come to the water for solace.  Whenever something bad has happened, my feet will guide to me to the nearest beach.

Listening to the endless sound of the waves lapping the shore is always enough to distract me from what’s eating me inside.  After a while, only the sound enters my conscious, and all the negative thoughts leave my body.  Sitting on the sand, I lose myself in the vast ocean that connects to some land faraway, a different continent that I myself haven’t discovered yet.  The sound of water takes all my worries, and carries them to a distant land over the horizon, even if it’s just for a little while.

He hates to admit it, and almost never does so publicly.  But he does believe in those “frivolous” things.  He tells himself that only the “vulnerable" members of society believe in those kinds of things for comfort; such as the victimized Haiti people who found solace in voodoo when they were being oppressed.  Superstition has always been the comfort blanket for the weak. And he refused to be weak.

But there he was, standing in front of the vermillion Torii shrine gate.

The “gate” was much more massive than he anticipated − he wouldn’t be able to put his arms around half the column − and to see the horizontal kasagi rail above, supported by the two columns, he had to look up, straining his neck.

The other day, I read the manga (a Japanese comic book) Tokyo Love Story for the first time. The TV adaptation of it is probably more well-known than the original, with its massive ratings (apparently, it was so popular that “women disappeared from the city on Monday nights,” when it was shown), mega-hit theme song, and the famous line “let’s have sex,” uttered playfully by the heroine, which was a bit too brazen for the people back then. I digress. Anyways, written back in the late 80’s, the manga has a scene were the preschool teacher, that the main character had a crush on for a very long time, gets criticized by a concerned mother for licking her fingers, then touching a wound of a boy who just tripped chanting “pain, pain, go away,” (a popular practice in Japan amongst parents to tame the child when s/he gets a scrape) for “AIDS can be transmitted from saliva to the wounds.”

Come Out & Play (Keep 'Em Separated) - Part I

When I was in high school, I never dared to be out. I lived in a place where I now refer to it as “hicksville.” It is a quaint, if not boring, little town where it is impossible to go for a jog, grocery shopping, or bar-hopping without bumping into someone you knew. Even if you didn’t notice that there was an acquaintance hovering nearby your vicinity at that time, you will be sure to hear that “so-and-so saw you!” from a very very thoughtful acquaintance.

In a town where parents gossip eagerly about their kids’ classmates’ romance, I well knew that if me being gay became official, that will very much affect my parents. That combined with living in a country where I didn’t speak the language fueled my frustration. I would feel a sting of defiance here and then, and would scribble “gay and proud” on the school desk now and then. Ah- teens. They do the dumbest things that they get a bit ashamed of when they look back at their actions. I found it funny when those desks I scribbled on got replaced few weeks later.