May 10, 2010. Goshomi Junior High School, Fujisawa Japan

I was freaking out on the train, some low-level panic attack rolling around my insides like a mass of oily tentacles, for no reason really, except for waking up too early, the last hour in bed plagued alternately by dreams of being awake and being awake, and never being entirely sure which was which or what, if anything, had just happened. Part of it I guess was the two cans of strong Chu Hi I drank to get to sleep (it's like drinking bee stings), the poison still lurking in my system and part of it was the crowd, blank-faced commuters and someone not far away from me who smelled like they'd shit themselves, but the biggest part, or anyway the most pervasive, was the thought of THE FUTURE, the words towering like black monolights in a prehistoric desert, and I'm the monkey in front of them, banging on the ground with the broken end of a sun-bleached bone in a futile attempt to understand it all.

What the hell are you going to do with your life? Where are you going? How will you support yourself? (The monoliths were beaming this shit at me telepathically.)

The future is a rubix cube and it's like if I just keep twisting the thing, working at it, I'll be able to solve it, figure the whole thing out, patterns aligning in neat, monochromatic blocks.

I got over it, mostly, on the bus, by doing some breathing excersizes with my eyes closed and sitting in the sun that's always a few shades yellower out here, like the light in a picture from the 70s, a nostalgic light, simple and rural.

I was sitting next to a highschool girl in a short, navy skirt and black knee-highs with pink, play-boy bunny logos on them, and I had this vision, or fantasy, of her putting her small hand on my thigh, and me taking it, and smiling, the two of us holding hands, with only the barest hint of sexuality between us, just comforting each other, taking refuge for a mintue from a cold, hostile world.

When I opened my eyes she was texting someone on her cell phone and I felt like an asshole.

This is what lack fo sex will do to me, and living here, on the archipelago of the perverse, doesn't help.