I’ve come to sit face to face with an unfortunate truth here in Tokyo, and even though I can try to hide it by making out with twenty-three year olds (okay, just one) it still lingers on my shoulders like a very unhappy, very loud crow. My escape in 2010 which lasted a wonderful seven months was fraught with bad behavior and the reminiscence of a youth that I thought did not exist in New York. Then it hit me, all my friends in New York are considerably older, well established, adult-like people. In Tokyo most everyone I know is around my age, still struggling, still figuring it all out. And so it has become a sort of haven for the less respectable aspects of my immaturity. But this trip has been profoundly different, it might be due to last years tragedy, or more simply the ever quickly passing time, but Tokyo is just not the same. My friends are growing up, they even work during the day, go to bed at reasonable hours, and survive on other things aside from brown liquor and cheap beer. My old friend Markus wears sweatpants to work. Pierre has a girlfriend and he’s not even cheating on her. James can go out drinking and still find his way home at the end of the night. Who are these people?
I entered my life stage of rebellion much too late, twenty-five. It feels incredibly apparent like a glaring pimple on my forehead. She is not a grown up. She is still chasing an ideal.
It’s sometimes hard to share my reality with the rest of the world. But so much of the world is made of ill-truths. We worship false idols, and we prod at them with our long pointy sticks to see if they are human. People look for the bad. People want the shitty honest truth and I want to give it to them.
I’m gonna leave a comment because I enjoy reading about your early-life crisis. Thank you for being so candidly entertaining. I’m a bit older than you, and unfortunately been going through the same thing since…um, yeah. A lot of my friends have real jobs, responsibilities, babies and I’m…still staying up until 5 am. I have no choice but to identify with younger people. I’m sure that’s also what they say on Dateline Predator. Anyway, I look forward to reading more, here and on Twatter.
ur ‘tea w. codeine’ title on spazbook was good enuff 2 lure me over 2 this post but what a downer it is, eh? t’is a shame that now tokyo = real life, when it used b tokyo = lala-land.
if i were u, i would warn ‘em that whenever u touchdown, they should prepare 2 reacquaint themselves with the gutterous life we all kno + love ‘em 4. after-all, despite their new lives, surely they must feel cheated by the empty promises of maturity, which we all kno is utterly overrated. i bet ya that they r craving some injection of frivolity 2 bring ‘em back 2 the dark side anyway. fck that bollox, u have a new vocation 2 fulfil girl.
… do me proud + viva early-life crisis.