Toi Tengoku

Doing tacos, pineapples, and bourbon out on the dog’s end of Koenji Look. The monday feels like me: bored staff clerks, heads bowed down over joyless, useless merchandise. No one wants to either work or shop today, which is like the sort of dramatic impasse that Koenji does better than anyone. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone laugh or smile since I got off the train hours ago. A weekend in Shinjuku sounds like an airport taking flight. This is a slow sweet funeral. The cost of the day becomes clear when when a sleeping suit, copy of Shonen Jump on his lap, nods off for seconds before violently throwing his head back in shock and then over and over again, probably still doing it now. Occasional silent girls skulking by like destroyer class hovercrafts, oversized celeb sunglasses, black stockings, and the aura of the heavily armored. You feel them coming in shifts like cops or storm clouds. The boys are so weak and painfully vulnerable by comparison, scarfing McDonald’s fries in front of the conbini, toes pointed inwards, their dangling cardigans might as well be on a single delicate coat hanger. The girl in the magazine, with her sunglasses off turns out to be talkative when on the job, when she’s getting, you know, paid for it. “I like dandies, not ikeman” she says while the pit boss polishes glasses. “What’s the difference?” asks the customer, half-Japanese, born in America, and totally lost before he even took the stairs down or the elevator up. “Ikemen are young and stupid. Dandies are…adult.” Still doesn’t understand. Never will. Nervous white boy with backpack pacing up and down the block, taking pictures of that faded, busted up Koenji Look sign that looks like it will wind up at Mandarake hen-ya tomorrow. And now it’s starting to rain out there. Our nights must be incredibly long, when they begin and end in Koenji.