Refund

Reading while waiting for the machines to wash and dry my clothes. A weekly meditation of sorts. The Mennonite preacher writes about the four focal affirmations:

    "When were you last able to affirm them?

            There is no place I would rather be.

            There is nothing I would rather do.

            There is no one I would rather be with.

            This I will remember well."

Yeah. 

And then later I went for some chow at the Tavern of Regrets. The waitress took the liberty of ordering me  my usual opening drink. I ordered the pizza on special this week. It had white onions, scallions, green olives (the topping that sold me) but was devoid of even one piece of the advertised crispy chicken. When it was time for the check, I complained to the waitress who has begun to acknowledge me as a reluctant regular. She took the pizza off my bill and went to the kitchen to yell at "them". 

Driving home with the leftovers,  I was looking at the black clouds and the first stars against the darkening blue hour backdrop. I thought of Okinawa and a small town made up mostly of tiny bars and restaurants called Henoko. 

There was a bar there called the New Sakura (Cherry Blosson). I'd go to drink the habu saki when I was just 19. The habu is a local venomous snake. They soaked them in saki in big glass jars and the resulting liquor was supposed to give you fantastic powers. 

There were two or three hostesses in the New Sakura and Mamasan. They were always working. The hostesses always smiled. Mamasan never did. 

Their jobs were to make us happy enough to buy drinks. Especially those lady drinks that afforded us a few minutes of flirtatious conversation with a woman which would, in the end, lead us only further into frustration and with empty pockets. 

Of course, all organisms move towards stasis, and so we evolved the natural defenses which allowed us to survive the experience. Just as these girls had evolved their defenses long before we arrived. 

Anyway, there were three hostesses. My friend assigned them names. I cannot remember the other two right now, but there was one that he nicknamed Monkey Face. She was not pretty in any conventional sense. But she always wore the biggest smile. And she always seemed to be working the hardest to overcome. She bore the weight of so many jokes and slights. 

She was a lot like us jarheads, I thought. Adrift, lonesome, expendable, longing for something other than this. Maybe just trying to find enough warmth to keep living.

I never laughed at her. She was a spiritual sister. Sometimes we sat together. Always she hid behind that smile. 

Usually all of these things would get the better of me at some point, and I'd take off to be alone. When every place in Henoko had closed, I'd stumble back to the base under a strange, sometimes hostile, moon and sky. Like this one, here, tonight. 

Sometimes, while walking, I'd pull against the tether that kept me tied me to the planet, but not too hard, because I found out it was only just the very thinnest of threads. 

Yes, I've been able to make those four affirmations. But it cost me.