him he could call me Miffy, which is my screen name, and it’s so lame I’ve never actually told it to anyone who I know in real life, but I went and told him. I wasn’t sure any more if I was saying the words I was thinking, if they were coming out of my mouth and he heard them, or if they were all still in my head, unsaid, which meant they never reached him and I just wanted to say them, I couldn’t tell. My body was still feeling hot, but it was like I didn’t know which part of my body felt hot. And I just kept talking. I had to find out his name. If I didn’t, then I would be totally worthless. That terrified me. The heat in my body made me feel like I was somehow outside the moment I was living in. That made me get reckless, and want to stay that way, so I really went for it. Sorry, um, I just want to ask again, it totally doesn’t have to be a real name, just anything, like a screen name would be fine, I just wanna know, what should I call (you)? is what’s on my mind, I mean, I’ve just really been wondering, I mean, wanting to ask, so, like, I’m asking now, um. That’s what I said to him. But in the end he never told me his name. He didn’t lie or make up a screen name, he just ignored the question, so even though I tried, it didn’t mean anything, which was like the worst. In the hour or so since the movie ended, how many stupid mistakes had I made? It’d be like counting stars, and I didn’t feel like counting. If I tried, I would just feel worse and worse, I’d probably want to die, so I didn’t. I thought that my body was getting hotter because it didn’t want to live any more. I knew I was losing him. I knew he wasn’t actually listening to anything I was saying, that he wouldn’t remember any of it. But he felt like he couldn’t just ditch me, so he stood there pretending to listen, zoning out, thinking about whatever. Like what would be the funniest song to play over this pathetic situation, or something like that. Normally that would embarrass me to death, but I was already torturing myself plenty, so getting ignored wasn’t anything I was worrying about. He was saying something to me. At that moment I didn’t have the energy to understand him. But I could get the idea, he was making moves to leave, and sure enough he made a little apologetic face and right away said goodbye and walked off, footsteps hurrying towards the movie theatre exit. When I was completely out of sight, he slowed down, then looked over his shoulder to make sure I wasn’t like stalking him. Then he called his girlfriend, the one who was supposed to go to the movies with him, and told her the movie was shit, he slept through half of it. They talked about other stuff, then made plans to meet up, and he got on a different subway from the one he would usually take to go home.
The performance started. The mood in the room shifted with almost no warning, like an ambush. Or maybe it just felt that way to the guys because we were all drunk and had no concept of time. There was a change in the quality of quiet, like when snow suddenly stops falling. The murmurs of the crowd died down, and the house lights dimmed a little—not that they had been very bright to begin with. So maybe it was just the impression of the lights dimming. The six of us were all still drinking beer, to the point where none of us knew how many we’d had. Everyone finished the little bit that remained in our paper cups—it seemed like the thing to do with the lights going down and the feeling that the show was about to start, and after a bit the performers came out. There was nothing flashy about it, neither their entrance nor the performance that followed, it had a totally relaxed feel. First, a white girl took the mic. She wound the cord a few times, which there didn’t seem to be any reason for doing other than to mark time. She started talking in English. Next to her stood a Japanese girl who was interpreting, and she had a mic in her hand too. The white girl spoke in a rich voice, sometimes suddenly getting louder, and the first couple of times she raised her voice it triggered a screech of feedback, but the feedback stopped quickly enough. She was explaining what the performance was going to be about. Although the explanation was already part of the performance. We’ll be talking about things, but we don’t know what we’ll be talking about, and the reason why not is that we haven’t prepared anything. But we’ll talk anyway. That must have been what she said, because that’s what the interpreter interpreted after her. There aren’t just mics on the stage, she said, there’s also a mic on a stand in the audience, and it’s open to anyone who wants to speak. The audience mic stood right behind where the six of us were sitting, kind of blocking the aisle. If anyone has anything they want to say, feel free to get on the mic at any time. The interpreter said all that in Japanese. Of course nobody got up and went to the mic. The room fell silent. This is, after all, Japan. The girl, and I’m just guessing here, she let the silence go on, thinking maybe that would get past the Japan-ness. But before the silence could get too heavy it was broken. One of the performers, the young black guy who might have been in
