NOWHERE-NOW HERE, HECTOR CASTELLS TRAVEL JOURNAL – CAPSULE XII

TO TAKE THE PISS OR NOT TO TAKE IT: A PHYSIOLOGICAL DELIGHT

“The novelist Natsume Sōseki counted his morning trips to the toilet a great pleasure, “a physiological delight,” he called it.”

Junichiro Tanizaki. “In Praise of Shadows.”

I look at Mae one last time. It is a crispy morning in the heart of Fuji’s imperial valley. It smells like black tea and juniper trees, and my bladder is about to burst.

Mae and I were born orphans in a hot place —and a continent apart. We both escaped the heat and moved to a colder place, where we both remained childless —and still a continent apart.

She loved someone as much as I loved Selby for the same amount of years, and we both ended up finding out rather late that we were destined to be cats. It has only taken me half a century to find her, and all of a sudden, I have dog feelings for her. She has already disregarded them. And she is Japanese: talking about feelings would take as many roundabouts as trying to get a hug from an Old Catholic father.

I ask at point-blank if she is aware of what my eyes are saying. She opens her mouth and says sayonara, gets in the car and fucks away.

Honest to Piss

I want to cry, but I need to piss to be honest. Unfortunately, I’m in the most improper spot in the world to go free pissing.

If Japan has taught me something, it is that there are toilets literally everywhere, which is the exact and prodigal measure of how offensive it could be to go toilet free.

North West by Mae’s East

I start walking towards the auspicious mountain, the two-syllable, friendly word: FU JI. Sounds like unsolicited Future Jujitsu. Fujitsu.

The view is ten million times better than the etymology —let alone physiology altogether.

Not even contemporary scholars seem to agree on what’s the meaning of FUJI. Some of them will tell you that it translates to wealth or abundance. Others will say that it means immortality. Whatever it is, it feels like the exact opposite of a physiological delight: it is a full on bladder torture

Needles

I imagine hot balloons, I picture hundreds of them, a rainbow coloured army of bubbles sucking fire, idling the heavens, and floating beyond the realm of physiology.

I walk distortedly, my steps squeezed by the urgency, blind to the sight of evacuation cubicles. I had seen them before in the wild, dotting national parks and waterfalls, but this place must be wilder than wilderness.

I consider how mortifying it would be to be found in a pool of my own piss, and I instantly picture my departure: first burst, then coma, then nothing.

It is kind of ironic to meet my end in this humiliating fashion after having escaped a killing spree and dodged a number of bullets in the last 24 hours. I thought I was choosing life instead of death. I guess that is the main problem with thinking when you are a dyslexic.

The sight of the hamlet is controversial in a full bladder sort of way. I can picture a million toilets in Nippon bloom, their immaculate wings, its transparent tiles and sterilized basins spread like a viral Supreme Gallery of Physiology, the one institution I would love to become a permanent member of… I’d give my lungs as a deposit, whatever it takes. I PROMISE!

Plasticized Rim

It is only then when magical thinking meets destiny: I recall that I have a bottle of water inside my obnoxious backpack. I take off the lid, empty the water (drinking it will trigger a sudden implosion, I believe) and then insert the foreskin around its plastic rim, and release.

My smile is wider than Fuji and as ephemeral as the flight of a deadly butterfly. While kneeling and struggling to dry-help the liquid to find its continent, I hear a noise above my head.

I look up and I see a massive Easter egg suspended in the air, and meet the eyes of another human travelling inside it, someone who could take a photo and blackmail me forever. She is younger than me and she is grinning like the spectator of a horror movie with a joke in it. I’m the joke. She could be the Joker.

The egg slides through the metal wiring and she and the chair lift are gone with the clouds.

I seal my bottled pee knowing that in Japan your waste is your shadow: whatever leftovers you produce you are their father, mother and, ultimately, their disposer: you must get rid of them in private, don’t even dare dreaming about public bins: they are not a thing around here.

I start walking like a normal person. My cheekbones are incandescent; the release has not quite met relief just yet.

Homestay

After an extenuating search and three spotless toilets, I find a bed for the night in the last available hostel in Kawaguchiko, one of the three lakes lying at the bottom of Fuji san. It is a bunk in a mixed dorm with another three humans in it. I’m already traumatised.

There’s only one human inside the room when I check in. I say hello. He says nothing. I try again, this time I say my name. He stops writing and looks up disgusted: I might just have interrupted the greatest paragraph in the history of literature.

He remains consistently silent. I bow awkwardly to the genius and express my condolences with a meagre Sorry. The nothing answer keeps mounting up. Then I climb the little stair to my crib, drop the obnoxious, and observe that he is not quite writing anything but typing a string of emojis in IG.

On my way out he says: Wait, and I spectacularly ignore him before saying: Maybe it is time to take the piss.

Piss off, he says.

We are off to a great pissing off start.

Framed Ice

Outside the room, there’s a corridor with framed pictures of Mount Fuji and a number of immortalised tourists saying cheese in unison under the snowed peak. The owner only appears in the photos with famous people in it.

I recognise three stars I interviewed during the sad years I spent asking questions to famous strangers: Natalie Portman, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Vin Diesel, some random Holy Trinity of Acting Mediocrity.

I’m looking at Arnold’s wasted face when she appears out of nowhere: The bastard would not even put off his cigar in a country where smoking in national parks is illegal, she says.

Mediocre Stars

I turn around. She is the human in the cabin. She takes out a marker from her handbag, draws a morbid skull on Arnold’s cigar and writes “Toxic Waste.”

I wonder if she is risking going to prison before I start laughing. We are both cracking: Arnold is seemingly smoking a ballistic missile now.

“So you are one of us?” she asks.

“Who are YOU, ” I try asking nonchalantly.

“The firm mentors,” she says.

I repeat what I’ve just heard. I fail.

“No, not the firm, but the fermenters,” she clarifies.

Emoji mouth

My mouth becomes the shocked emoji.

I have two instant flashbacks in one second.

The first one involves Arnold saying, “Spit it out,” in the lounge of the hotel in Madrid where the interview takes place on a sad morning in 2002. He feigns to be promoting Collateral Damage, but he can’t stop bragging about his campaign to become the next governor of California. I wonder what might be more damaging: his movie or his candidacy? So I just ask: What is more complex: politics or bodybuilding?

He thinks that I’m taking the piss, and asks if I’m trying to portray him as a “small man.” I find it hilarious and ask him if he is dyslexic: I’m an extremely small version of him. It is then when he says it.

Spit it out. Don’t take the piss.

I can’t help but say:

Stop whining! (It was one of his trademark lines as a bodybuilder).

Arnold blushes like the smallest man with the tiniest mind. I say nothing and he goes: I’m not going to talk about my infidelity.

Thank Dog I haven’t asked: he is already doing it, so delighted with physiology and betrayal.

Double Flash

The second flashback involves Selby and I having dinner in our favourite restaurant, a hidden place downtown Dublin, where we used to go before he was murdered.

The place was called “Gil Billy,” which was the combined name of the couple who ran it.

Gil had a firm mind and a spicy tooth: she loved fermenting chillies, and taught me how to do so. Her hot sauce remains unparalleled. Billy, on the other hand, loved to spice the alcohol, and he was famous for his fermented plum wine.

On our last night at “Gil Billy’s”, Gil and Billy sat with us at the end of their shift. Customers were gone, candles were on, and at some point Selby asked how come they had both got into fermenting. Their eyes were sparkling when Gil said: “Let’s say we never stopped taking the piss. That’s why we are still capable of working and living together.”

It was the first time I heard the line “take the piss,” and I found it amusing. The conversation reached an unexpected physiological end.

It was the last time I saw Selby’s memorable smile.

Take the Fuji Expiss

I have spread my notepad, pen and book around my table at the longe, where I’m trying to finish my PissOpus. I’m very thirsty. I look inside my handbag, find a bottle of water and I’m about to gulp it down when I realise what it is.

Fast-forward one second and the human in the cabin walks in and sees it all.

She looks like the Goddess of Snowboarding: tall, fit, has a sweet smile, and smells like organic shampoo. I can only wonder if she is putting two and two together.

Jesus, you are FAST, she says.

I haven’t moved. You are the faster of the two.

She looks at me hilariously and crystal clear points at the bottle with her eyes.

The fucking Earth is failing to swallow me. My heartbeat feels like the simultaneous photo finish of two hundred Formula Ones.

I panic. She keeps smiling and suggests keeping the bottle in the fridge. I would do anything to dispose of it. Taking it out of sight seems the number one priority. I shut the fridge behind me and she says:

“Now you’d better wait for, at least, three months.”

I wonder what the fuck she means. Before I can ponder the line, our lanky roommate walks into the lounge, walks to the kitchen area, opens the fridge, takes the bottle, and swallows it in one go.

Distinctive Shouter

You don’t want to hear the noise. We are laughing so hard inside that our little veins might be exploding.

The Earth is not swallowing me, but her smile keeps me alive and kicking.

Is that what you meant you fucking psycho? Did you plan this?

That’s the piss taker himself, speaking —if not shouting and gaggling.

I look at the Goddess of Snowboarding. She is piercing me with a strawberry dew sort of glance.

It is only then when I realise:

Wait, when you said, “you are one of US…. What the heck! Are you taking the piss?

It only takes one question: the answer is literal, massive:

YES!

Yes we are.

Cheers.