Your Bed In Tokyo
I didn’t tell you that it had nothing to do with you although I did do it because I knew I could stay in your bed in Tokyo. I didn’t tell you that it took 8 days for my family to figure out I wasn’t in America anymore.
You didn’t know all the reasons why I flew across the ocean so far that it became a different day. You didn’t know why I got fired from my job or why I used all my savings to buy a round trip ticket and that I didn’t plan on going home. You didn’t know that I wasn’t on vacation.
We spent a lot of time watching movies on your laptop on your bed with your cat. Most of the time we were talking more than watching. I suggested that we buy tickets to this place I had read about on the internet called the Suicide Forest. I said:
“Not to do it together. Just to see it.”
So we bought tickets for at the end of September. At the beginning of September I ran out of money but I cancelled my return flight anyway. And on the night my flight left without me I got into bed naked with you and you took off your clothes too. The day after that we started fighting. You later admitted you felt hurt about reproached advances when you told me:
“You think you’re above the law of the way things work.”
You resented funding what you saw as my vacation but you continued to pay for my food and alcohol and cigarettes and share half of your bed with me even though we never fucked again after the first time. But we still slept naked and I still watched you get dressed every morning. I later claimed I was only drunk when I yelled:
“Everyone hates me because I can’t love them.”
And it started to become clear that we wouldn’t make it to the Suicide Forest together. I started going out at night and waking up on the sidewalk. You started planning a backpacking trip through southeast Asia. The idea of you traveling for a month alone through third world countries seemed unlikely to me. I said:
“You won’t be able to talk to anyone for a month.”
And then I realized I wouldn’t either. You said:
“I’ve traveled abroad before. I think I got it.”
I hated that you used the word abroad. I said:
“I guess only rich people get poor countries.”
I didn’t believe you would actually go until I found an envelope full of yen on your bed and a note that said:
-Please don’t let my cat die.
When I dropped the note was when I first thought about what death might be like. It could be a screen that displayed “oops over” for 5 seconds in size 12 font and then went blank forever. I imagined your body covered in rat-sized bugs as it floated down a river in the Cambodian jungle and then:
-Oops over.
And when I saw people in the street who I could never talk to because they didn’t speak my language and I didn’t speak theirs I thought to myself:
-Oops over.
I wished I had the power to see inside them instead of the power to imagine them dead. And then I thought:
-There’s too many people in this world.
That was the thought that made me drop the cigarette that burned the little crater in your cat’s ear. Her eyes reflected back at me with a yowl when I tried to reach under the bed to pet her. She couldn’t understand the concepts of accident, apology, regret. So I let her outside and she never came back.
When my sister found out I was in Japan she had sent me an email. Part of it said:
-Cutting out the things that you think are making you unhappy won’t make you happier but I guess you’re getting closer to the problem.
I read this again while on the bus to the Suicide Forest. The weather was gray and on the horizon I saw 2 dark slopes rising to meet each other before getting lost in the clouds. I thought it might be the base of Mt. Fuji but I had never seen a mountain before so I couldn’t believe that it could be that big and I tried to email my sister:
-Tell dad I’m ok.
But my phone died and behind my eyelids was my name displayed in size 6 font.
Inside the Suicide Forest was all green moss coating everything and when I went in far enough I could barely hear anything at all. I forgot to buy a ticket back to Tokyo and I didn’t even know where I was. I was inside the Suicide Forest near the base of maybe Mt. Fuji. Even when it started getting dark it seemed unlikely to me that I could get myself killed while traveling in the first world.
But inside my head were 3 mental images:
-The envelope full of yen on your bed in Tokyo.
-My dad’s blue truck in Delaware.
-You pulling on your briefs while holding a lit cigarette.
And these things felt like they were dissolving into a blank screen. By the time the sun rose I was still in the Suicide Forest near the base of what was probably Mt. Fuji but I felt like I was barely there at all.