Fresh from a late-night izakaya, the teenager next to me vomits into her crotch,
And we’re still nine (long) minutes away from Shibuya.
Earlier, on the platform in Shinjuku, a faceless salary man
pushing behind me strategically threw an elbow in a circular
wave that demoted me to the back, revoking my chances to sit
on the heated seats of the Yamanote Line.
Dammit, that was my last train leaving and I’m still at the back of the line,
but as I swim my way onto the train some lady flings her purse into my crotch.
A passed-out passenger takes up the green bench, two poor old ladies long to sit
down, but (heartbreakingly) they can’t until everyone gets off in Shibuya,
and all the while I’m thinking, what circular
lives we lead, interrupted by this second thought: is that a woman or a man?
I fall asleep, and six hours later I am woken up by a confused older man
who asks me where is the the end of the line,
but I tell him: no beginning, no end (because the Yamanote is, afterall, circular).
I am sleepy, grumpy, hungover, and I want to kick someone in the crotch,
but I figure some coffee outside the Hachiko Exit in Shibuya
will shake me out of my grogginess, and I can just watch people and sit.
Old, slow-moving souls are my weak point, so I let an old man sit
in my seat. I look out the window into the (Tokyo) morning and think, man,
everything looks identical from Shinjuku, to Ueno, to Ikebukuro, to Shibuya.
After all, there are an infinite number of points on a line,
and just as I’m about to conjure up a metaphor, I realize I have a sweaty crotch
because this country's air-conditioning, like its seasons, is circular.
I never fully complete the metaphor about the Yamanote’s vicious circles
because I watch two salary men jostling and arguing for who gets to sit
in the last remaining open seat—one guy jabs his briefcase into the other’s crotch.
Unfortunately, I cannot see what ensues because the train arrives in Shibuya,
and I step out onto the platform and make my way through the (two-minute) line
of Japanese-corporate-on-their-way-to-the-company men and women.
Was this the purposeful design of man:
To ride an early morning/late night green train, to exist in a 12-hour circle?
To see so plainly the circumference of our lives as defined by (a stop on) a line?
To see successes and failures determined by the daily acquisition of a seat?
To try to find a breath of fresh air in such an unlikely place as Shibuya?
To, day in and day out, endure being bumped into by an army of anonymous crotches?
I hope that (on the way back home) I can sit.
I hope I can have a conversation with an anonymous woman or man.
Even some good ol’ Tokyo eye-contact would be swell, lest we all be so crotchety.
