EELS2

A fat man’s breast in a cheap sky blue skirt. View zooms back from the fat, allows more male cleavage in. Suddenly there is a space between me and the cotton covering his sweaty milkless nipple. He is too close to her, his porky fingers klip-klopping silently as if playing a midair sonata in the hope of luring her closer. I can still hear what he is saying, but the words are no longer clear. She has stopped listening, and so must I.

She tunes in again. Cutesy pong ping noises, the electronic orchestra of modern life. ‘Odaiba’ ringing out in a polite but urgent voice. Constant reminders of your place and responsibility to follow directions in the most non-threatening manner possible. Spaces bordered by sounds, the aural map of the city with your route painstakingly defined.

The tunnel swings to the left, scanning a carriage half-full of pre-programmed consumers dedicated to future spending. One last lingering view of the metal cocoon before ejaculation into the retail orgy. There is emotion in her vision, I see through her lens and feel the frenzied elation of signs, but deep within that feeling, hidden below layers of admiration and optimism, there is an all-pervading boredom, as if nothing she does will make any difference. Maybe that is why I am here, must be the reason she is showing me all this. Even she can’t stop it, so how can I? Is there no way to stop this mindless fervour, this shrink-wrapped seduction that consumes people over and over and over again?

There is lust in the eyes of the other passengers, glistening behind thin-rimmed glasses, through side-cut fringes. Every spare inch of wall space is foreplay, plastered with advertising for English schools, shopping centre grand sales, mobile phone companies and JTB holiday packages. Every face is smiling, bathed in the glow of morning and the prospect of enlivening an existence by purchasing some service or good previously and unaccountably absent. So much for the advertising. The three-dimensional faces surrounding me are not joyful, but rather pensive, as if waiting for some unheard command to adopt the approved expression of the day, or worried that their performance here will disappoint. Japan Rail signs suspended from the already low ceiling caution that “Any masterpiece just becomes noise disturbance when emanating from earphones”. Two green alien silhouettes on a white background explain this for those who can read neither Japanese nor English. The aliens have featureless heads attached to featureless torsos by hourglass necks. Their emotions are just as difficult to guess. The other passengers seem more interested in their mobile phones, the electronic umbilical cords of this age. Wheezer uses his to check the schedules for the service he is already on. He jots a notation in a frayed notebook, drawing another circle beneath a column of identical marks.

The carriage doors slide open, exhaling relief and compressed air. Breathe while you can. Welcome to the newest world. I know this tale of the new Tokyo. The only way to find an unfilled place was to create it from nothing, a modern-day Atlantis built on reclaimed earth in the middle of Tokyo Bay. Odaiba, the future city, the last chance to create something free from the empty-headed delirium of life.


Everything feels so real, but cannot be. I am lying on a futon in a dimly lit apartment room, surrounded by empty cartons and the stench of my parents’ shame. I am inside, she is waiting outside the door in her striped socks, all energy in the face of my lethargy. But she has powers and secrets I cannot share. I am not floating, I am seeing, watching through her camera’s lens. Her face must stare back from the reflections in the carriage windows or even in the eyes of the fat man, but the window never stops long enough for me to catch it, to pick her out. She flits away on impossible angles, and the most I can hope for is snatches of her trailing shadow, handfuls of dark that fill but don’t flesh her silhouette.

I imagine her as I must: the sum of the Polaroids tacked to my wall, an unfinished collage with white bordered scales for armour. Emptiness above, the irony is poisonous, because I want nothing more than to know what is there. I need a face to make her real, so she can become a memory instead of a dream. There is only one way I will ever know, and fifty-nine nails stand ready to resist that urge.


She follows the other passengers as they shuffle off the monorail in their invisible shackles, eyes flicking from image to image as they follow the middle path. Proclamations loom on every side, sights and sounds advancing in leaps and bounds. The forest of advertising and the soundtracking storm of commercial messages are the only nature they will experience during this trip. The daypacks and walking sticks favoured by weekend hikers have been abandoned in favour of an ample stock of low-interest credit and the approved attire of the week. Printed messages appear in both English and Japanese; the announcements solely in the latter. Foreigners are not the targets here; not yet. I read about ‘year sales’, ‘happy down prices’ and ‘climax bargains’ – time, emotion and sex. Shopping is for life, not just for Christmas. The window stays open, forcing me on in their wake, the smell of photo booths, perfume and baked goods filling my prison. They are being drawn in, moths to the bright lights, forever fluttering but never finding the inside. Wheezer’s heavy breathing has been replaced by the cries of small children, the rustle of banknotes, and the shicking of mental checklists being marked off in every head.

She turns away from them, sneaking through a fire door so furtively that I expect a security guard to call after her. Come with me, Masa-kun. The dank stairwell smell lasts seconds, replaced by an odour I had almost forgotten and cannot immediately place. Light fills the box, blinding me again. The eels whiplash back, slamming me into the wall. Their struggles become plaintive, burrowing deeper as if afraid to be seen, as if my body is safer than what lies beyond the glass. The smell grows stronger; tiled bathrooms in once-visited restaurants, an artificial mix of the sea and the forest in a can. Air freshener worlds sanitized for your enjoyment. Why must all toilets smell like nature? No-one shits outside anyway. An olfactory world for 150 yen per can. Yet there is salt in this ocean breeze, and the smell of cut grass around sandy baseball fields, and the acrid taste of industrial fumes, of stagnant sewers underfoot where last week’s dinners have found their niche. The smell of memories buried deep; of scattered food on the playground; of baseball team liniment; of fresh air.