Do not touch the life in the pond

An old man plays a harmonica while we dance our youth and inebriation around him. He is 72 but he shares our waking dream, as we move like an organism of 30 heads, 120 arms and legs red yellow and green. Anjeli told me that the last few times she was at Rub-a-Dub, he had been there too. He didn't seem to drink and he wasn't sleazy or creepy. He just enjoyed reggae same as everyone else at the bar.

Drinks were emptied by a thirst in the room that diffused into a warm, slow and syncopated beat of undirected happiness. The music resonated off vinyl records--so old school! The cramped little basement transformed into a beach (an underground, dark and dank one). We carefully plan the sequence of our poisons of choice: Caribbean Queens, Mojitos, Rum&Cokes, Mint Juleps, Piñacoladas. 40 sticks of cigarettes between the two of us.

Anjeli and I staked a claim at the corner of the bar so she could stare at Ichiro, the hottest and nicest among the four bartenders. 'You've been here three times', he tells her in Japanese, 'but we've never talked. What's your name and what do you do?' They have a running conversation in snatches all night--in between, he tends the bar while we gossip and giggle about him. But we never find out what his origin story is so we invent a few for him. He is kept by his lover, an older woman, whose car keys he has strung on his belt. He was orphaned at 17 and left school to work and bring up his younger sister Mariko. His is a samurai's noble beauty with the bushido-grade honor that goes with it, Anjeli argues, and therefore we agree on the Mariko version (plus we give her cerebral palsy).

Eventually, the lights went on and a very jarring Banana Boat song told us that daylight come and we had to go home. The whole bar sang along with some of the me-say day-oes before dutifully stumbling up the stairs to the exit, blinking in the sudden and incongruous sunlight.

And this is how I spent 7 of my 24 hours in Kyoto.


Photo credit: Anjeli via fb