| dewy decimal |
2004-07-14 - 12:36 p.m.
By the time I woke up and saw that I had missed Vaness and Lee's call, my rendezvous for dim sum at Legend Restaurant had come and gone. No pork hash for me, no fried taro, no stopping by at the Weekly which is just across the stream to say a quick hello to all my old colleagues. Regrettable is the boy who smokes pot into the wee hours of the brightening night.
But I am able to do my hair quickly enough so that I am at the Contemporary Museum half an hour before Lee and Vanz arrive. Scarfing down a bland, over-priced turkey and provolone not because I'm hungry but from the guilt of being skinny and not having an appetite. The workers are unhelpful and I find myself having to grab a napkin from the unoccupied table next to me. My bald server is talking to the hostess, who I gathered from eavesdropping, is also the manager. A mosquito loiters in my body heat but I find that I can't kill it because of the caf�'s dim 'ambiance.' I tolerate its infernal buzzing until my friends arrive.
Vanessa is wearing a white T-shirt that says, Istanbul; Lee, a mauve T-shirt, unusually bespectacled.
We revisit the Hockney exhibit for the gazillionth time and I make my token comment on how the front portion reminds me of Matisse. We dutifully but quickly move through the exhibit re-realizing how familiar the whole thing is.
The main exhibit is featuring cast-iron horse sculptures by Deborah Butterfield. Only three or four really confront me; really make me feel anything. The two small and wiry ones. The big orange horse assembled from letters.
Not knowing what we should do next, we stretch out, back down, across the enormous green lawn that overlooks the ground's extensive garden. The free standing sculptures. Native Hawaiian foliage. An enticing, glassy pool. Tall trees whose shadows tip toe over our faces. Vanessa is a little more reserved than her normal self, owing to the fact that her mother has been in the hospital for the past few weeks after suffering from a series of aneurysms that have affected her motor skills. I want to comfort her but at the same time want today to be a day that she could get away from the hospital, if only for scattered moments. I say nothing of it, not knowing if it's the right thing to do.
The three of us find big booty hoes, deer heads, and grimacing faces in the few clouds that move in and out of our sight. Vanessa pulls a green inch worm out of her hair as we talk about the stranger characters in our lives.
In the midst of our conversation, I see a bird much larger than the others, green and yellow, coast from one tree to another, soaring on it's elongated tail and wings. "Look!" I say in my really loud, gay voice that comes out when I get really excited. Vanz and Lee laugh at how much more obnoxious it sounds when we're not drunk and completely miss my tropical bird.
We wait for it to appear from the tree I saw it delve into, but nothing comes out. I begin to wonder if they think I'm lying, or maybe even worse, I begin to wonder if I've gone totally crazy. But finally it flies out and perches it's colorful body on the small tree straight ahead of our parked bodies.
"It looks like a Jamaican parrot," Lee says.
I add in my 2 cents, "Lawd've mercy, caw caw. Lawd've mercy, caw!"
The groundskeeper tells us its closing time so I part with Lee and Vanz in time to pick up my Japanese friend, Soichi, from the airport. Soichi is a Japanese journalist, and accomplished boxer. He just turned 34, is slightly adorable, can suprise me with his honesty, sometimes has B.O.
Soichi wanted to take me to see his friend, Jake Shimabukuro, who is a sort of local celebrity and is supposedly this master of the ukulele. I'd seen him before on commercials and heard him briefly playing on my lunch break at Tamarind Park a few times. I remembered him being really cheesy and unremarkable but agreed to attend this little shindig thinking it would at least entitle me to a free buffet and would fulfill my obligations with my visiting friend.
Willows, where the concert/dinner was to be held, was packed. I had come here a few times. Once was for good ol' David's surprise Birthday party and once after my Grandmother's Funeral Service. The limp, lazy willow trees, the pond that circles about the restaurant, under the floors, along the buildings, a small rushing waterfall. The hypnotic fountain that shoots water as peas, water as a serpent. I was almost annoyed because, for a while, I couldn't look at anything else but that motherfucking fountain. All in all, everything was as I had remembered it.
When we got to the reception, Soichi suprised me by making me pay for my own $35 ticket. This kind of pissed me off because I was using all my gas and time to attend something with him that I had no desire to see but I shrugged it off, mentally committing myself to eating $35 worth of food.
I was seated next to an elderly Japanese woman, Soichi across from me. As I looked around, I noticed that almost everyone there was a Japanese national. The 6 o'clock sun was coming in through the open door and sat so directly on my face that for an hour I was forced to wear my sunglasses,
After finishing one greedily piled plate of seafood and chicken, I was already full, no thanks to that unimpressive sandwich that I had forced myself to consume earlier. I was glugging my glass of water, too full of ice, when Jake came on. He was wearing a loud aloha shirt and his token glasses.
Well let me just put it to you like this, from the first number, he blew my fucking mind. The fullness of sound that his 3 other band members added, fucked me up even more. I'm telling you, I am a very harsh critic, but I haven't seen anyone give such a heart felt, honest performance in months. His keyboard player looked really familar in a way that I felt as though I had known his naked body. I was sure this couldn't be true but the feeling stuck with me throughout the performance. The old Japanese woman sitting next to me bobbed her head emphatically with the rhythm and when the song was over she would look at me with a big smile and wide eyes that sought out conformation that we had indeed did just have out minds fucking blown. I couldn't stop smiling.
When the show was over Soichi introduced me to Jake and I shook his hand and as expected he was as nice and as beautiful a person as Soichi had said. Then Soichi introduced me to his Jake's dad and brother which made me feel really lame and I started thinking about how earlier I told my friends that I was dreading coming to this concert and how I could give a shit about meeting Jake Shimabukuro but was doing this out of obligation and pity. And now how I felt sorry for myself for saying those stupid things but feeling alright with the ease at which I could acknowledge that I was so completely wrong.
After that, I dropped Soichi off at the airport and he told me how nice it had been to hang out with me these past couple of days and how he was comfortable with the amount of research that he had done here, how he missed his son whose one year Birthday was 10 days ago and how the concert was a perfect thing to experience before his departure home.
When I got home I felt satisfied and inspired. I wrote a few pages of that story that I've been working on then I masturbated, smoked a cigarette, thus ending my amazing day.
