9.19.16

It's midnight in Kagoshima. I'm sitting at the edge of a patch of astroturf placed with humble graciousness for the itinerant bedless like me. The film crews are scurrying around looking for dramatic shots, cute girls. There is a crowd. The shinkansen didn't so much bullet here. More like scalpel. It cut through the supertyphoon, straight to the heart. A frictionless penetration. "Malakas" means "wankers" in Greek. We're getting buffeted by wankers. I'm too old to go plunging off into the calamity hoping to photograph somebody's visually dramatic misfortune. But I'm too young to sleep.

It is disappointing how casually these bland corporate temples shrug off one of mature's most violent tantrums.

I have a poncho, I could go out. But I have to give a talk in these pants in two days. Devastation tourism is gross anyway.

A single ginko leaf just blew to my patch of astroturf.

The film crews huddle under protection for 29 minutes, then dash out into the wankers to come to you live from Kagoshimachuo Station. Teenagers run around and pose for snapchats with a comically ruined umbrella. All the potted trees now lean right. Shinzo Abe detractors, I suppose.

Gortex-clad inspectors amble by and politely decline to acknowledge me.

The storm is now frightening. Or it should be. All I feel is that magic clarity and calm that all coffee-drinkers aspire to but rarely achieve. The roof above my astroturf is starting to groan and let billows of mist through. Great, big, powerful wankers.

The mist turbulates around the halogen lights. The teenagers are back for better snapchats.

We root for the underdog. This snarling, tremendous wanker will surely lose, so for now I cheer it on. It is rising to a roar, pulling at the roof panels and forcing billows of mist through.

Shinzo Abe's enemies have been decapitated.

I need to pee.

It sounds like a jet engine. Everybody is gone except for my fellow bums. A teenaged baseball player in uniform and a traveling businessman.

The universe is nothing but wankers dribbling all over everything. But I can't piss.

Where there was once a single ginko leaf now there's a scattering of tree crowns and branches.

I found a bottle and snuck between a pillar and a Starbuck's. I didn't appreciate the amount of technique required to piss in a water bottle. I made a tight seal, then as the bottle filled, the pressure inside grew until my foreskin filled up with piss and air and exploded off the bottle like a water balloon off a faucet. So I left a wide spatter of piss in the only place the won't get purified by this storm.

I have 4.5 hours until I can take a shit. Hopefully that will go better.

Anyway, the wankers are just pounding away. What was thrilling an hour ago is now boring. So it goes.

--

It's 4:15AM and I was just rustled awake by the world's most polite vagrant-busting cop. It turns out I was sleeping under a giant ferris whee installed on the roof.

The only sign of the nocturnal wanker assault is some residual dampness and a scattering of branches and leaves. And I'm just waiting for the stationmaster to unlock the bathrooms so I can take my shit.

Another day.