Tokyo or bust

 The various and numerous bars have passed by in something of a blur - little to either dissuade or recommend them - and now I find myself here. Translating to something akin to 'Black Rose', it's one of Tokyo's more affable (see plastic) fetish bars.
 
 You can spend an hour or two in one of the cages, should you wish, with a plethora of leather/PVC/fishnet clad waitresses who are happy to thrash the shit out of you in privacy, or in front of an audience, if that's your cup of cha.
 
 I'm at that jovial-lunacy stage of drunk, and more than happy to prop up the bar and laugh and cringe at all I survey. It's enough to make your eyes water.
 
 One of the barmaids, in between pouring drinks, interrogates me about me, about London, about me in London, about Tokyo and what I think about it and my fetish-club virginity. While I have been into fetish clubs in London, Sydney, San Francisco and New York, this is the first I have chosen to go into, not merely ended up in by accident, and she tells me that this must have meaning. Must have significance.
 
 I agree with her that this must be so, it's just that the meaning has, for now, escaped me.
 
Would I like a turn in the stage cage? Maybe later. MUCH later.
 
 I've suddenly realised that while I thought she was mixing a drink, she was, in fact, pouring molten candle-wax over my hand. Hmm.
 
 A friend, The Beast, asks me what the liquid in the glass on the bar in front of him is. I take a sniff.
 
'It's Laphroaig.'
 
'Are you sure?'
 
'Yes.'
 
'Could it be something else?'
 
'It could be Ardbeg.'
 
'Yeah?'
 
'But it's Laphroaig.'
 
'Definitely?'
 
The Japanese businessman returns to the bar and The Beast asks him what it is he's drinking.
 
It's Laphroaig.
 
The Beast is distinctly underwhelmed at my ability to identify one single-malt whisky, out of several hundred brands, without even tasting it, but by its aroma alone.
 
 Personally, I was quite impressed with myself....
 
The James Bond theme blares out of the speakers and all of the waitresses suddenly appear behind the bar in various Bondesque poses. The bar starts to move up and down on hydraulics as they spin and whirl and cavort, and I laugh so hard at the wonderful absurdity of it, I come close to throwing up.
 
 It's all beginning to spin a little so I decide that it's time to move on. I step aside to allow the dominatrix, dragging a man along on a dog-chain, to go first.
 
 It's a good thing I'm as drunk as I am, as the vice-like hand-grip she subjects Little Adam to, on her way passed, leaves me clinging to the bar in mute, nauseous, dull-agony. I'd hate to think what that would have felt like without my beer-armour.
 
 Dominatrix's? You can keep them.
 
As I stand in the elevator, waiting for the doors to slide shut, a gimp on a leash tries to get in with me. He's yanked back out and doors whisper shut just as his beating commences.
 
 Onwards and upwards. New bar.

6:57 PM - 22 Comments - 22 Kudos - Add Comment

torn apart

 And it's just a lazy summers day, and the very smell of the crop dust in the air is redolent with the memories of passed times.

 You get off of the bus, and you enjoy the three mile stroll to the garage to pick up your car.

 Is it going to colour in those "tragedy" blanks, or leave you with something in your account? Well, either way, the engine management warning light says you've got to take your chances with the best of them.

 Music, rattley in your ears from the headphone covers you lost, during that moment of weekend shame, propels you along.

 You'll always be a rocker and a roller.

 Indifference. It's a small thing so the fee for it is small. The fee for the man hours is rather large.

 But, it's a weight off of your mind, no? Perhaps.

 Regardless, you embrace those familiar smells as you climb, wallet lighter, into your car.

 It maybe an oven, on this late summer day, but it's your oven.

 A scenic, swirling, dusty, lowlight blinded drive, onto the pub.

 Not even enough time to sip at your pint, untreated wooden boards cleaning your heels, before you hear about Rob "The Hammer" Clarke, whom you used to work with.

 You recall the staggered, skipping dance you'd make, over, under and back above all the furnace machinery you used to make, each morning, with the tools and grease gun, luckily cleverly avoiding all the hard pistoning parts that could decimate your limbs, as the heat siphoning off of it made your head swirl as it made the plastic of your boot heels sizzle.

 Rob, the most experienced of them all, he'd not have put a foot wrong? No, that's just fucking bullshit - spare me the time for someone who knows what the fuck he's talking about. You're full of shit, mate.

Rob must have zigged, when he should have zagged - and now he's going to lose his right foot.

 How do I get away with it?

It never works out the way it should.

 None of it's right and none of it can be justified or helped along, and all you're left with is recrimination and self loathing for what you just found too easy.

12:19 PM - 7 Comments - 20 Kudos - Add Comment

stamped out curriculum

 They must think I'm stupid.

12:21 PM - 22 Comments - 20 Kudos - Add Comment

you say "tomato".

 So do I.

12:45 PM - 28 Comments - 24 Kudos - Add Comment

inside the outside

Just when something is good, people have to go and fuck with it.

Just when something is right, people have to go and fuck with it.

Just when something can be depended upon, people have to go and fuck with it.

"What the fuck is this all this fuckery about?!"

"The new jukebox?"

"Yeah the new juke-box!" I jab a finger accusingly against it. "It doesn't have the artists, it has... 'categories'.. to search through.. and.. and.. Christ, if it says 'Soul' for one of them, and yet has no James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Sam Cooke or Bill Withers in it, what do they think soul even is?!" It's enough to make a grown man weep.

"Weeell..."

"And 'Hard Rock & Metal' has got Bon Jovi and Status Quo in it! I'm scared that if I look into the 'Soft Rock' section, I may very well puke upon the floor."

"What about the bit that says 'Nu Metal' on it? No good?"

"...."

"......."

"................"

"No good?"

"You don't want to start me on that."

"Okay! So..."

"'Nu Metal' with Nirvana in it?"

"I'm not starting you on that. What are you drinking?"

 Perhaps alcohol will make everything good and right and dependable again.

 "So, bought your plane tickets and booked the hotel yet?" The father of the groom inquires.

"Nu uh. Not just yet, I've not decided whether to go a week early or stay a week late.... I've never been to Portugal, and I think I want to see Lisbon as well as Porto, but before or after, dunno..." I gently swirl the beer around in the glass, emphasizing my certainty that all things will work out in due course.

"You taking that Canadian with you?"

"Nope. I'm taking a Mermaid." I inform him.

"What?"

"A Mermaid."

"Eh?"

"You know... underwater chick with a tail.. causes storms and lures sailors to their deaths on rocks. A Mermaid, y'know?"

"Right."

"But she's promised not to cause any deaths, or eat raw fish during the service!" I assure him, as he checks his wallet for beer-tokens, well aware, as the glasses fill with air, that the next round is his.

"Well, I should hope not, too." He seems relieved.

 Something is weighing upon my mind, and despite the warmth of the crackling fire to my right, colluding with the beer to make me sleepy and content, I wont be damned by the small-print.

"Having said that, they're notoriously untrustworthy, so her promise to me may not, infact, be worth a wank, in all honesty." I concede.

"You're like another son to me, y'know that, Ad's."

11:48 AM - 15 Comments - 24 Kudos - Add Comment

not out

"You're ninety-five years old?! Christ, how do you manage it, Tom? You look so young!"

"Well, boy...", Tom paused to take a reflective glug of his pint of beer as he tapped some ash off the end of his roll-up, into the nearest bar ash-tray.

 Several other drinkers ceased their chatter, awaiting imparted advice.

"Oi looks after meself."

 Cue another long, long drag on his smoke.

10:46 AM - 29 Comments - 26 Kudos - Add Comment

more

 is, however, very seldom less.

3:59 PM - 15 Comments - 24 Kudos - Add Comment

less

is more.

1:31 PM - 23 Comments - 25 Kudos - Add Comment

repetition

 The shirt gives testimony that someone will never make it as an escapologist. Cuff buttons prominent only by their absence and the trailing pieces of entrail-like thread.

 From where it lays on the floor, inside-out sleeves stretched to either side, it looks as if someone, beyond the point of using such advanced mechanics as buttons, has stood upon it, and, in their fight for clothing freedom, simply pulled their arms up.

 The trousers, in contrast, have faired much better. Folded and placed upon a chair. A small mountain of bar-shrapnel coins on the table next to them. There is a solitary boot next to the chair. The other is, for now, A.W.O.L.

 A cold cup of partially drunk tea surveys the room accusingly.

 And well it should.

5:46 AM - 29 Comments - 34 Kudos - Add Comment

today...

.. as a Libra, your stars indicate an eaten-by-myspace blog, and with Saturn ascending through multiple stages of being-right-there-in-spaceness, you will thereby go with incandescent fury.

 Your lucky colour is eau de nil.

 Avoid people of the French persuasion, and ginger dogs with large eyebrows.

8:57 AM - 43 Comments - 34 Kudos - Add Comment