EELS4

Down to the stumps now, two joins gone from each leg. Two smooth skinned caps between me and the floor. I am sinking lower and lower. The remaining eight cables tighten, the forgotten four hang listlessly around me. I want to imagine listening to their frustrated snapping, but they make no sound.


Mechanics and light. Longer cylinder. Smaller focus. The cables retract, jerking my legless torso towards the ceiling. One girl, maybe six, sinks weeping to her knees in the middle of the mall as her mother marshals her three siblings in exasperation. Click. She looks up quickly but stays down, sobbing, a marathon runner who can run no more. Brief second of respite as the cutter hits the dead air between my legs, breathing in frantic refills before plunging onwards. Both legs gone, sacrificed to her need for photographic memories. Click. She loses dignity. I lose a slice of hip. Always one more sale, one more store, one more shop assistant ready to urge on stragglers with boundless enthusiasm. I am, surrounded by all I despise, by the symptoms of the epidemic. The camera flashes over item after item, sale-sorted and ‘new line’ tabled piles, lines and rows. Clicks. Penis and testes gone before I can fear their loss. Lose change. There is no appeal for me in fingering racks of sweaters or fondling designer bag leather. Is that what I am missing, that connection between the carnal and the consumed? This is life. Sex gives life. This much I know despite my painful lack of experience. Now it’s too late. So many slips between the understanding and the attainment. It’s too hard. This is easy. Why don’t you try it? She steers us into Ralph Lauren, a shrine to cheap garments with ultra-expensive logos. Polos arrayed rainbow fashion. Fuschia. Click. Lime. Click. Aqua. Click. Maroon. Click. I am growing used to the pain as I shrink. A shopping mall in Odaiba may be the only thing to remember me by. Third world beggars on skateboards, pushing themselves along dusty pavements using calloused hands at the ends of over-sized arms. Begging for coins from tourists, but tourists are Japanese exports, not imports. Trends are for those without ideas anyway.

Meika steers a course between blindingly-lit displays, radioactive icebergs in the dark carpet sea. Titanic customers searching for the items that will complete a unique look preferred by their million closest friends. This is a process for logic, not the impressionable. It should take approximately three minutes. Style, colour and size. In that order. No vacillating. Thirty seconds to select the cut. One minute locating garment in least garish colour and most appropriate size. Trying on optional. Remove from display. Proceed to counter. Exchange money for goods. Ninety seconds to process payment. Depart store. Regret everything.

Large red polo shirt takes forty-seven seconds to locate and cull from the stack. Too big for her, probably for me too. Certainly will be in twenty photos’ time. ¥8000: ¥200 for the shirt; ¥7800 yen for the tiny man on the horse. Will it fit you? Maybe one bigger? Shopping for the ogre she has never seen, creating my image from the outside in.

‘Are you a loyalty club member, lady?’
‘No.’
‘Are you aware of the many benefits of joining our rewards scheme?’
‘No.’
‘Would you like to take an application form?’
‘No.’

Twenty-one seconds of the shop assistant’s face progressing through the miniscule changes in appearance that only trained observers can identify: affected congeniality, eager suggestiveness, surprise, shock, bewilderment, despair. Caught ultra-close through the optical zoom. Minefield acne scars betray the painstaken haircut. A casual observer would note only a slight uncurling of the plastic smile, a tiny narrowing of the eyelids, and an infinitesimal hardening of vocal tone, no more than the difference between a statement and a question in a foreign language.
The camera points down, catches fingernails drumming time on the counter glass, every tap increasing the tension in Salesman’s voice. She is playing Wheezer’s sonata, the finger movements all I remember of him now. Could be Mozart, could be SMAP. I don’t listen to music.


A millimetre perfect refolding of an already immaculate arranged shirt precedes its envelopment in feathery tissue paper, which is then bound with a strip of Lauren-branded ribbon. An opaque plastic drawstring bag follows – more corporate heraldry. She reaches across the counter to salvage her purchase before it is embedded in a block of concrete carved into the shape of a polo player. Her forearms are hairless and smooth. New vision from the forbidden floors. But Salesman is not done with it yet. He pulls away as politely but resolutely as possible.

‘If you will excuse me, lady, I will just pop it in a bag for you.’
‘It’s already in a bag.’
‘That isn’t THE bag, miss.’

He reaches below the counter and, with a flourish, withdraws a stiff cardboard bag that echoes as he opens it. Resting this new covering on the glass, he steers the pre- and rewrapped package inside as carefully as if delivering it in reverse. He stands the cardboard bag up so that its massive logo can remind us both of where we are, flicks the sides to remove any lingering creases, and slides it across to Meika two-handedly. He thanks her loudly for her custom, bows until his breath leaves clouds, and then disappears.


Back into the current, the bag bulging with bags rather than goods, one more pregnant reminder in this nursery. Whisking us away again like children late for school, the beckoning hands of shop assistants now waves of farewell, as if they know that their work is done. We have done our bit. Back to the Wheezer’s wet dream on wheels, a place to sit, to pause and think. A very successful trip, don’t you think? The tunnel tilts downwards, towards the bulging bag. So much fuss over one shirt. The tunnel lengthens, burrowing deep through the layers, the eels jerk me from side to side in mid-air, desperation in their movements, as if they know they will die if left in me. I strain for the floor with long-gone toes, trying to ground myself, to fight them, but I can only hang immobile as she takes each piece of me. The bag looms in the window like a multi-lipped mouth waiting to swallow, but in the space where the tongue should be, neatly furled and bright red, there is nothing.

The small boy picks up shells from the storm-dirtied beach, always looking for the creatures inside. Hollow after hollow, the sea’s roar scornful behind him. His face screws up in disappointment. Father reads a newspaper in the dunes, hidden from everything.