会ひたくて 逢ひたくて踏む 薄氷
I want to see
And to meet you
Stepping on the thin ice
– Madoka Mayuzumi
Countdown
The countdown had begun; music span from the speakers, people jumping up and down shouting out each number, thirty-nine, thirty-eight, thirty-seven, music beating out seconds.
Alone in the corner of the club, slumped against the wall, thinking, trying to remember the year that was nearly over. How apt it was to be single, now, just as I had been when it had begun.
Several times I’d been by myself, standing on a bridge, not by intention but I would just happen to be there, or on the rooftop in Shibuya; and there was the urge to jump.
A mass of legs, eye level, grey pants or black stockings, plaid skirts, thick heeled feet stamping, a blue laser carousel, speeding, faster, ten, nine, eight.
Not enough time to take in that year.
Where was the woman I’d come with? Her friends?
I’d left her upstairs where the lights were brighter; a strobe had been set full on for five minutes and I had retreated to the room below to give my eyes a rest from its beat.
I sat close by the bar, watched people wild at the sound of the bell, pulling party streamers and kissing, leaping into lasers, they too were glad that the year was over. I hoped they considered the man alone by the bar on a New Year’s day, squatting in the shade away from the lights. It wasn’t going to be easy, starting the year in this way, all the friends I’d come with elsewhere, the woman I was staying with, and the others.
Photo from Canada Good Gregory via Flickr
Madoka Mayuzumi’s official website